This talk will provide an overview of our group’s capabilities for materials discovery and crystal growth. We enjoy spanning a wide range of properties, from intermetallics to insulators. I will focus on two specific examples: First, I will discuss our work on new candidates for Eu3+-based quantum information storage in collaboration with the Goldschmidt group. These materials must be optically transparent with Eu-Eu distances large enough to achieve atom-like excitation spectra. Crystal symmetry, stability, and size are crucially important. Second, I will describe challenges and opportunities in chiral materials, with the champion being (TaSe4)2I with its dynamic charge density wave response. We reveal to be a much more disordered material than previously reported, but the chirality is surprisingly robust. Lessons from this material also inform our investigations of chiral transformations in CsCuCl3.