As new structural and material designs are being studied for future device applications, the complexity of the designs increases more and more aggravating the imbalance between theoretical and experimental development. Therefore, new fabrication methods are crucial for actual realization of the device. In this talk I’ll start by discussing the use of ultrafast lasers for advanced materials processing techniques and the significance of developing new nanofabrication methods for cost-effective manufacturing and rapid prototyping with high accuracy. The focus of my talk will be on a novel direct laser writing technique that enables fabrication of 3D metal-dielectric nanocomposite structures of tunable dimensions ranging from hundreds of nanometers to micrometers. This true 3D patterning technique utilizes nonlinear optical interactions between chemical precursors and femtosecond pulses to go beyond the limitations of conventional fabrication techniques that require multiple post-processing steps and/or are restricted to fabrication in two dimensions. Examples of both 2D and 3D direct laser written metal structures are presented. The second part of the talk will discuss methods of direct laser writing graphene structures. By using ultrafast lasers to photo-reduce graphene oxide, graphene patterns with higher conductivity are produced indicating that limited thermal processes can help achieve better quality direct laser written patterns.