• Forecasting severe weather events,
• Cancer gene research,
• Predicting new superconductors,
• Simulating and visualizing air pollution,
• Aerospace vehicle design,
• Energy conservation and turbulent combustion,
• Microelectronics design and packaging, and
• Earth biosphere research.

In subsequent years, other Grand Challenge areas were added. By focusing on problem solving, the HPCCI greatly improved the interaction between technology developers and end users of the technology. That interaction accelerated progress in the development and deployment of high-performance systems, networks, software, and associated usability technologies.

However, one criticism of the HPCCI was that although the focus on Grand Challenges was very important to science and engineering and provided valuable balance to the program, its impact on the average citizen was very indirect (CSPP, 1991). In response to this criticism, the initiative was extended in the FY 1995 Blue Book (OSTP, 1994a) to include research on the development and application of a national information infrastructure (NII) that would leverage technologies and applications associated with elements of the HPCCI. In addition, it extended the application focus to include several National Challenges, which address critical needs of our society and can benefit from high-performance computing and communications and NII research. The National Challenges can be viewed as national-scale applications. The National Challenges listed in the FY 1996 Blue Book (NSTC, 1995) included education and lifelong learning, digital libraries, health care, manufacturing, electronic commerce, environmental monitoring, energy management, civil infrastructure management, and public access to government information. A 1994 report on information infrastructure technology and applications (OSTP, 1994b)—an HPCCI component—notes crisis management as an additional National Challenge.