The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will convene an ad hoc committee of experts and scientific leaders to develop an agenda for fundamental research in separations science. The committee will write a report that will:
• Assess recent and ongoing research efforts to advance science that underpins separations of chemical mixtures and identify priority areas of research that will transform the field of separations science;
• Identify advances in chemical transformations, chemical and materials in-situ and operando characterization, computation and theory, and synthesis capabilities that can be employed to advance separations sciences and illustrate how they can be utilized to advance separations science;
• Address the intersections between chemistry, biochemistry, materials, physics, engineering, and information science that will be essential for scientific progress;
• Identify needs and opportunities for novel instrumentation and tools that will advance our understanding of separations processes, including laboratory scale to mid-scale to large scale, such as synchrotron light sources or neutron facilities;
• Identify the educational and human resource needs (including cross-sections of academia and industry) to enable advances in separations science; and
• Assess the potential impacts that fundamental research in separations can have on technologies and practices in industry.
The report will provide guidance to research sponsors, as well as to the research communities in academia and industry. The report’s recommendations will focus on science needs and priorities rather than specific funding or organizational aspects.