By Benedict and Jess Northend
Each year our Moonshots series highlights new frontiers where breakthroughs in science and technology are being used to solve some of the biggest problems of our time.
Since our first publication in 2021 (and second in 2022), huge strides have been made in health, energy, resilient food systems and more, helping us to live healthily for longer, while responding to the most urgent climate challenges around the globe.
As we look ahead to 2023 these themes remain. This year’s contributors describe the need for a multi-pronged approach to tackle challenges on many fronts: from looking to space to help meet our energy needs, to using biology to optimise health, to renewed efforts to put the power of computing and artificial intelligence (AI) to work.
Pippa Malmgren opens this year’s edition with a literal moonshot – detailing efforts led by the US and by China to establish permanent bases on the Moon from which to further explore space with a view to solving problems here on Earth. She argues that such exploration could be an engine for inclusion and clean energy, but warns that space could become just another battlefield for Earth-bound geopolitics.
Health care and biotech remain core topics, with personalised biotyping emerging as a way to pre-emptively treat mental-health conditions, as outlined by Leanne Williams and Ruth O’Hara. Gordon Sanghera describes Oxford Nanopore’s DNA-sequencing and genomic technology, which offers the possibility that we will be able to access real-time alerts so we can head off threats to our food system, and even the next pandemic, before they take hold. Trevor Martin of Mammoth Biosciences discusses the role of CRISPR and gene therapies in enabling us to not only detect but also prevent disease.
This year’s list includes quantum computing for the first time, and its potential benefits in areas as diverse as rapid drug discovery and improving cybersecurity. Tim Menke sets out Atlantic Quantum’s efforts to create more accurate quantum-computing capability and to scale processor sizes without compromising performance – critical to delivering on the promise of quantum.
In the realm of transport and energy, several contributors are optimistic that work to scale clean technologies will soon prove fruitful. Nick Hawker describes technical breakthroughs in Fusion while Val Miftakhov details ZeroAvia’s efforts to create zero-emission aviation through the use of hydrogen-electric fuel cells. Meanwhile Ashwin Shashindranath and Eliza Eddison set out what it will take to deliver these innovations to market – including financing deep-tech climate ventures and the role of policy and incentives in accelerating the shift to renewable technologies.
Finally, we include a moonshot generated by ChatGPT. Generative (AI) has hit the mainstream this year, with ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion creating text and images with widespread applications. ChatGPT’s contribution sets out how it could speed up the design, testing and optimisation of novel materials and new transport technologies – assuming AI systems continue to master the intricacies of human creativity.
It’s a great list of people. Follow the link below to hear their ideas. And if you have some grand plans you think we should know about, please get in touch.