At Vanderbilt University, Assoc. Dr. J. Caldwell used boron nitride crystals to develop a hyper lens that displays living cells and viruses on them. The hyper-lens made of boron nitride crystals gave rise to the possibility of studying living organisms at the nanoscale. The researchers explained that the lens will be developed to display objects at a size of 30 nanometers, corresponding to one in three of the human hair. The study was published in the journal Nature Materials.