Grand Challenges for Biological and Environmental Research: A Long-Term Vision Workshop Report

A Report from the Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee

 

Grand Challenges for Biological and Environmental Research: A Long-Term Vision

In March 2010, the Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee held the Grand Challenges for Biological and Environmental Research: A Long-Term Vision workshop to identify scientific opportunities and grand challenges for BER science in the coming decades and to develop an overall strategy for drafting a long-term vision for BER. Key workshop goals included:

  • Identifying the greatest scientific challenges in biology, climate, and the environment that DOE will face over a 20-year time horizon.
  • Describing how BER should be positioned to address those challenges.
  • Determining the new and innovative tools needed to advance BER science.
  • Suggesting how the workforce of the future should be trained in integrative system science.

This report lays out grand research challenges for BER—in biological systems, climate, energy sustainability, computing, and education and workforce training—that can put society on a path to achieve the scientific evidence and predictive understanding needed to inform decision making and planning to address future energy needs, climate change, water availability, and land use.

Suggested Citation: BERAC. 2010. Grand Challenges for Biological and Environmental Research: A Long-Term Vision; A Report from the Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee March 2010 Workshop, DOE/SC-0135, BERAC Steering Committee on Grand Research Challenges for Biological and Environmental Research (www.science.doe.gov/ober/berac/BER_LTVreport.pdf).