Meeting Global Challenges

Abstract

Every major challenge of modern life, such as ensuring energy, health, water, or food security in a sustainable world with a predicted nine billion inhabitants, has complex science and technology (S&T) components and is global in character, even though its expression often involves national idiosyncrasies. Searching for solutions requires that the scientific community operate in fundamentally new ways. How to deal with these complex global issues is a major focus of this year's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), whose theme is Meeting Global Challenges: Discovery and Innovation .