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Future Directions Workshops

“Innovation is the key to the future, but basic research is the key to future innovation." 
–Jerome Isaac Friedman, Nobel Prize Recipient (1990)

Over the past century, science and technology has brought remarkable new capabilities to all sectors of the economy; from telecommunications, energy, and electronics to medicine, transportation and defense. Technologies that were fantasy decades ago, such as the internet and mobile devices, now inform the way we live, work, and interact with our environment. Key to this technological progress is the capacity of the global basic research community to create new knowledge and to develop new insights in science, technology, and engineering. Understanding the trajectories of this fundamental research, within the context of global challenges, empowers stakeholders to identify and seize potential opportunities.

The Future Directions Workshop series, sponsored by the Basic Research Office of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, seeks to examine emerging research and engineering areas that are most likely to transform future technology capabilities. Rather than a standard conference format, these workshops are designed primarily around small-group breakout sessions and whole-group discussions for scientists and engineers from academia, national laboratories, and industry to express their perspectives and outlooks over areas of rapid progress in fundamental research and shed insight on three overarching questions:

• How might the research impact science and technology capabilities of the future?
• What is the possible trajectory of scientific achievement over the next 10–15 years?
• What are the most fundamental challenges to progress?

Ideas for Workshop topics can be submitted here.   
 


 

Past Workshops

Click the icons to read workshop reports

2022

Wireless Communications

2023

Toxicology

2023

Controlled Living Organisms

 

 

2022

Quantum

2022

Microelectronics

2019

Topological Science

2019

Human Machine Teaming

2019

Social Science

2018

Management
Sciences
2018

Synthetic Biology for
Energy and Power
2016

 Network 
Sciences
2016

Quantum Information
Sciences
 2016

Power & Energy: Advances
 from 
Photonic Sciences 
& Applications
2016

Compressed Sensing & 
Integration of Sensing 
& Processing
 2015

Computer 
Vision
2015

Foundations of Intelligent 
Sensing, Action & Learning
 
2013 

Chemical Engineering 
& Bioengineering
2012

Selected Topics in 
Mechanical & 
Civil Engineering
 2012

Neuroscience: What can 
we know by 2025?
2011

Mathematics

 
 2011

Selected Topics in 
Computer Science
2011

Engineered (Synthetic) 
Biology 
2011