Abstract: Materials' electronic properties arise from the complex dynamics of electrons flowing through the material. These dynamics are quantum mechanical and realize many surprising phenomena without classical analogues. I will present analytical and numerical work clarifying these dynamics in three novel materials which have attracted intense theoretical and experimental attention in recent years: graphene, the first ``2D'' material, whose electronic properties can be captured by an effective Dirac equation; topological insulators, whose edges host surprising one-way edge currents; and twisted bilayer graphene, an aperiodic material whose properties can be captured by an effective system of Dirac equations with periodic coefficients. I will then present ongoing and future work focused on further clarifying the remarkable properties of twisted bilayer graphene, which was recently shown to superconduct when twisted to the ``magic'' twist angle 1 degree.