News & Comment

This month’s Focus issue highlights ongoing work by computational scientists to help address the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as discusses how the sustainability of computational science itself can be improved.

Dr Carla Gomes, Ronald C. and Antonia V. Nielsen Professor of Computing and Information Science, director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability, and co-director of the newly established AI for Science Institute at Cornell University, discusses with Nature Computational Science her research on sustainability and how we can address the world’s most pressing issues little by little.

Proponents often tout quantum computing as a more energy efficient alternative to classical computing methods. However, the extent to which it can reduce energy usage remains unclear, as experts have not yet agreed on metrics to determine its energy consumption.

Dr Y. Shirley Meng, Professor of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and Chief Scientist at the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS), discusses her research on energy storage materials and the importance of multidisciplinary collaborations.

Dr Alexandre Caldas, a Director at the United Nations (UN) as Chief of Country Outreach, Technology and Innovation in the Science Division at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Chair of the United Nations Geospatial Network across 40 agencies of the UN, talks to Nature Computational Science about the importance of data availability, the Sustainable Development Goals, and evolving policy.

Dr Michael Falk, professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Physics at Johns Hopkins University, talks to Nature Computational Science about his academic training at the intersection of physics and computer science, his research in condensed-matter physics, as well as his experience in improving diversity and inclusion in the physics research community.

Even though Nature Computational Science is a computational-focused journal, some studies submitted to our journal might require experimental validation in order to verify the reported results and to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed methods.

As artificial intelligence (AI) proliferates, synthetic chemistry stands to benefit from its progress. Despite hidden variables and ‘unknown unknowns’ in datasets that may impede the realization of a digital twin for the laboratory flask, there are many opportunities to leverage AI and large datasets to advance synthesis science.

We highlight two primary research papers, published in this issue of Nature Computational Science, on computational methods for moiré magnets.

Materials design has largely expanded to multiple compositions, which requires the mixing of an increasing number of elements. In this joint Focus issue with Nature Materials, we take a closer look at the role of computational methods for guiding exploration within such vast chemical spaces.

Dr Núria López-Bigas, ICREA Research Professor and group leader in biomedical genomics at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine, discusses with Nature Computational Science about her research on cancer genomics.