Grand Challenges were USA 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. Examples of grand
challenges are:

1. 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;
2. Electronic structure calculations for the design of new materials such as
   • chemical catalysts,
   • immunological agents, and
   • superconductors;
3. Plasma dynamics for fusion energy technology and for safe and efficient military technology;
4. Calculations to understand the fundamental nature of matter, including quantum chromodynamics and condensed matter theory;
5. Symbolic computations including
   • speech recognition,
   • computer vision,
   • natural language understanding,
   • automated reasoning, and
   • tools for design, manufacturing, and simulation of complex systems."

"A Research and Development Strategy for High Performance Computing", Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy, November 20, 1987

A list of one liners reads:

Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy, "The Federal High Performance Computing Program," Sept. 1989, pp. 49–50:
Appendix A Summary

• Prediction of weather
  Numerical weather prediction
  Numerical weather prediction uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to predict the weather based on current weather conditions. Though first attempted in the 1920s, it was not until the advent of computer simulation in the 1950s that numerical weather predictions produced realistic...
  
  , climate
  Climate
  Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
  
  , and global change
  Global change
  Global change refers to planetary-scale changes in the Earth system. The system consists of the land, oceans, atmosphere, poles, life, the planet’s natural cycles and deep Earth processes. These constituent parts influence one another...
  
  
• Challenges in materials science
  Materials science
  Materials science is an interdisciplinary field applying the properties of matter to various areas of science and engineering. This scientific field investigates the relationship between the structure of materials at atomic or molecular scales and their macroscopic properties. It incorporates...
  
  s
• Semiconductor
  Semiconductor
  A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...
  
   design
• Superconductivity
  Superconductivity
  Superconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance occurring in certain materials below a characteristic temperature. It was discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911 in Leiden. Like ferromagnetism and atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a quantum...
  
  
• Structural biology
  Structural biology
  Structural biology is a branch of molecular biology, biochemistry, and biophysics concerned with the molecular structure of biological macromolecules, especially proteins and nucleic acids, how they acquire the structures they have, and how alterations in their structures affect their function...
  
  
• Design of pharmaceutical drugs
• Human genome
  Human Genome Project
  The Human Genome Project is an international scientific research project with a primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA, and of identifying and mapping the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional...
  
  
• Quantum chromodynamics
  Quantum chromodynamics
  In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics is a theory of the strong interaction , a fundamental force describing the interactions of the quarks and gluons making up hadrons . It is the study of the SU Yang–Mills theory of color-charged fermions...
  
  
• Astronomy
  Astronomy
  Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
  
  
• Challenges in Transportation
• Vehicle Signature
• Turbulence
  Turbulence
  In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is a flow regime characterized by chaotic and stochastic property changes. This includes low momentum diffusion, high momentum convection, and rapid variation of pressure and velocity in space and time...
  
  
• Vehicle dynamics
  Dynamics (mechanics)
  In the field of physics, the study of the causes of motion and changes in motion is dynamics. In other words the study of forces and why objects are in motion. Dynamics includes the study of the effect of torques on motion...
  
  
• Nuclear fusion
  Nuclear fusion
  Nuclear fusion is the process by which two or more atomic nuclei join together, or "fuse", to form a single heavier nucleus. This is usually accompanied by the release or absorption of large quantities of energy...
  
  
• Efficiency of combustion
  Combustion
  Combustion or burning is the sequence of exothermic chemical reactions between a fuel and an oxidant accompanied by the production of heat and conversion of chemical species. The release of heat can result in the production of light in the form of either glowing or a flame...
  
   systems
• Enhanced oil
  Oil
  An oil is any substance that is liquid at ambient temperatures and does not mix with water but may mix with other oils and organic solvents. This general definition includes vegetable oils, volatile essential oils, petrochemical oils, and synthetic oils....
  
   and gas
  Gas
  Gas is one of the three classical states of matter . Near absolute zero, a substance exists as a solid. As heat is added to this substance it melts into a liquid at its melting point , boils into a gas at its boiling point, and if heated high enough would enter a plasma state in which the electrons...
  
   recovery
• Computational ocean sciences
  Oceanography
  Oceanography , also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean...
  
  
• Speech
  Speech recognition
  Speech recognition converts spoken words to text. The term "voice recognition" is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software...
  
  
• Vision
  Computer vision
  Computer vision is a field that includes methods for acquiring, processing, analysing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions...
  
  
• Undersea surveillance for anti-submarine warfare
  Anti-submarine warfare
  Anti-submarine warfare is a branch of naval warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, or other submarines to find, track and deter, damage or destroy enemy submarines....
  
  

See also

• Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development
  Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development
  The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP1 through FP8, are funding programmes created by the European Union in order to support and encourage research in the European Research Area...
  
  , a similar series of research programmes in the EU.

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