Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 214, 41-48 (2012)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2012-01687-x

Regular Article

Accelerating scientific discovery by formulating grand scientific challenges

ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Clausiusstr. 50, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

^a e-mail: dhelbing@ethz.ch

Received: 1 August 2012
Revised: 9 October 2012
Published online: 5 December 2012

Abstract

One important question for science and society is how to best promote scientific progress. Inspired by the great success of Hilbert’s famous set of problems, the FuturICT project tries to stimulate and focus the efforts of many scientists by formulating Grand Challenges, i.e. a set of fundamental, relevant and hardly solvable scientific questions.