Twenty years ago, a Duke University professor, David R. Smith , used artificial composite materials called “ metamaterials ” to make a real-life invisibility cloak . While this cloak didn’t really work like Harry Potter’s, exhibiting limited ability to conceal objects from the light of a single microwave length, those advances in material science did eventually trickle down to electromagnetism research. Today, Austin-based Neurophos , a photonics startup spun out of Duke University and Metacept