Frontier Challenges Draft Survey

Overview

Frontier Challenges is about articulating ambitious fundamental research directions over the next decade and beyond for the physical sciences, and we need your help in identifying these. 

Your voice matters. Our outputs are only credible if we build on the diversity of input from the collective physical sciences community. By having rich input on probable directions, we will be able to draw together frontier challenges that resonate and catalyse community action. This includes providing inputs across all scales – from what frontiers excite you personally, through to wider questions that have community recognition already.   

We want to showcase the most exciting research questions in the physical sciences that could be answered through focused effort across and within disciplinary communities.  

The elegance of the physical sciences is that you can never quite predict the exact direction or outcomes that projects will deliver. Our most exciting or interesting discoveries often come from serendipitous observations that are followed through by talented individuals and teams. Or, indeed, through combining disciplines in new and exciting directions.  

We can never predict exactly what our fundamental capabilities will be; nor is this project seeking to constrain curiosity-driven discovery. However, within physical sciences there are numerous unanswered questions, experimental limitations, and challenges that you, as the community, are seeking to address now.

What if we addressed these? How would the discipline look? What are the new frontiers that this would create?   

The aim of this project is to capture ideas, from small to large, and to synthesize these into compelling science frontiers that inspire.   

Why your views matter

The mission of Frontier Challenges is to set bold, ambitious, community-backed, physical sciences grand challenges that elevate the role of curiosity-driven discovery.