Grand Challenges
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (January 2014) |
The Grand Challenges were first set into force as a set of United States policy terms set as goals in the late 1980s for funding high-performance computing and communications research in part in response to the Japanese 5th Generation (or Next Generation) 10-year project.
"A grand challenge is a fundamental problem in science or engineering, with broad applications, whose solution would be enabled by the application of high performance computing resources that could become available in the near future.
National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges
In February 2008 the NAE announced a list of 14 "grand" challenges for engineering in the next century. The NAE convened a committee of experts in engineering, science, and technology to form this list. The committee convened over the course of several months and took input from public comments made on the project website as well as opinions from experts external to the committee.
Current
Build Your Dream
- Engineer the tools of scientific discovery
- Reverse-engineer the brain
Joy
- Advance personalized learning
- Enhance virtual reality
Security
- Restore and improve urban infrastructure
- Prevent nuclear terror
- Secure cyberspace
Health
- Advance health Informatics
- Engineer better medicines also see Biotechnology
- Provide access to clean water
Sustainability
- Make solar energy affordable
- Provide energy from fusion
- Develop carbon sequestration methods
- Manage the nitrogen cycle
Public Poll
On October 6, 2008 at the NAE annual meeting, a public symposium was held where several members of the committee spoke publicly about the challenges. Following this event, a print version of the Grand Challenges website was made available online at the site.[1]
Members of the public voted on the challenges in rank order of importance, and as of the close of voting on June 30, 2008, the results of the top votes for the 14 challenges are as follows: (poll rankings)[1]
- Make solar energy economical
- Provide energy from fusion
- Provide access to clean water
- Reverse-engineer the brain
- Advance personalized learning
Other Fields Considered For The Grand Challenges
- Computational fluid dynamics for
- the design of hypersonic aircraft, efficient automobile bodies, and extremely quiet submarines,
- weather forecasting for short and long term effects,
- efficient recovery of oil, and for many other applications;
- Electronic structure calculations for the design of new materials such as
- chemical catalysts,
- immunological agents, and
- superconductors;
- Plasma dynamics for fusion energy technology and for safe and efficient military technology;
- Calculations to understand the fundamental nature of matter, including quantum chromodynamics and condensed matter theory;
- Symbolic computations including
- speech recognition,
- computer vision,
- natural language understanding,
- automated reasoning, and
- tools for design, manufacturing, and simulation of complex systems."
- Prediction of weather, climate, and global change
- Challenges in materials sciences
- Semiconductor design
- Superconductivity
- Structural biology
- Human genome
- Quantum chromodynamics
- Astronomy
- Challenges in Transportation
- Vehicle Signature
- Turbulence
- Vehicle dynamics
- Efficiency of combustion systems
- Enhanced oil and gas recovery
- Computational ocean sciences
- Speech
- Vision
- Undersea surveillance for anti-submarine warfare
See also
- Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, a similar series of research programmes in the EU.
References
- Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy, "The Federal High Performance Computing Program," Sept. 1989, pp. 49–50:
- "A Research and Development Strategy for High Performance Computing", Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy, November 20, 1987
- "Task Force Report Grand Challenges" (PDF). nsf.gov. 2007.