LIGTT’s List of 50 Most Needed Breakthroughs

January 15, 2015

Since the polio vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, one of the most dreaded diseases in history has been all but eradicated. Are there other scientific breakthroughs that could have an equally transformative impact on global human development, and if so, what are they?

When Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies (LIGTT) tried to answer this question, it found there were no good answers—or too many answers. So LIGTT director Shashi Buluswar assembled a small team and set out to identify the world’s most-needed game-changing technologies. After two years of investigation and analysis, the result is “50 Breakthroughs: Critical scientific and technological advances needed for sustainable global development.”