Karlis Agris Gross is a material engineer working on developing orthopaedic materials. His interest is to look for ways of increasing the performance of materials by addressing what happens at the micro and nano-scales.

Karlis is inspired by nature and looks at how things are arranged and put together in nature. His schooling is Australia where he received his Masters in Engineering Science, and it is here that he stumbled across the amorphous phase appearing in his coatings.

In his PhD in USA, he studied this in detail to learn why the amorphous phase is formed, and how it is formed. If the first stage of his research career, Karlis looked at disordered materials, now there is interest in ordered materials. Working with nearly the same composition as before, totally different properties could be achieved in the way that the atoms are assembled. His interest is order also spreads to other areas, such as food.

Earllier on, Karlis made ice-cream as a hobby, looking at ways of developing new flavours, but he then completed education in Italy to become a gelato chef. The composition and order in gelato is essential to give it the right flavour, texture and enjoyment. He is passionate in showing the important of microstructure of materials to optimise the final properties of materials, thereby using his training in materials engineering for the development of implant materials and gelato.