Learn how to synthesize and manufacture any new substance that can have scientific or practical interest, using compact synthetic schemes and processes with high selectivity for the desired product, and with low energy consumption and benign environmental effects in the process. This goal will require continuing progress in the development of new methods for synthesis and manufacturing. Human welfare will continue to benefit from new substances, including medicines and specialized materials.

Develop new materials and measurement devices that will protect citizens against terrorism, accident, crime, and disease, in part by detecting and identifying dangerous substances and organisms using methods with high sensitivity and selectivity. Rapid and reliable detection of dangerous disease organisms, highly toxic chemicals, and concealed explosives (including those in land mines), is the first important step in responding to threats. The next important step for chemists and chemical engineers will be to devise methods to deal with such threats, including those involved in terrorist or military attacks.

Understand and control how molecules react—over all time scales and the full range of molecular size. This fundamental understanding will let us design new reactions and manufacturing processes and will provide fundamental insights into the science of chemistry. Major advances that will contribute to this goal over the next decades include: the predictive computational modeling of molecular motions using large-scale parallel processing arrays; the ability to investigate and manipulate individual molecules, not just collections of molecules; and the generation of ultrafast electron pulses and optical pulses down to x-ray wavelengths, to observe molecular structures during chemical reactions. This is but one area in which increased understanding will lead to a greater ability to improve the practical applications of the chemical sciences.

Learn how to design and produce new substances, materials, and molecular devices with properties that can be predicted, tailored, and tuned before production. This ability would greatly streamline the search for new useful substances, avoiding consider