Collaborating to Tackle Grand Challenges

Grand challenges have historically served as shared goals among organizations, aligning scientific ambition with national priorities. As Martin Ho, Pramod P. Khargonekar, and Eoin O’Sullivan note in “Repurposing Grand Challenges in Tumultuous Times” (Issues, Winter 2026), the United States is entering a new phase in how research and development will be funded and ultimately pursued. Their proposed structure offers a framework to rapidly address urgent R&D challenges.

Prior to World War II, academic research in the United States was funded primarily through university resources, private philanthropy, and limited state support, with modest federal investment. Universities used endowments and operating funds to support research, which was often considered part of a professor’s scholarly duties rather than a separately funded activity. Private foundations were the most significant external sponsors, funding major advances in fields such as medicine and biology. State governments, particularly through land-grant universities and agricultural experiment stations established by legislation such as the Hatch Act of 1939, supported applied research in agriculture and engineering. Industry also sponsored research, mainly in chemistry and engineering, but these partnerships were modest compared with today. Large-scale federal funding of university research did not emerge until World War II, when agencies began contracting with universities for defense-related science.

Today, we see mounting pressure not just on US R&D budgets, but across the globe. Greater connectivity from research to innovation is expected from these investments. Concurrently, we see significant funding from philanthropic and venture-based sources that expect similar returns. Artificial intelligence and other technologies are increasing the pace of innovation itself. These factors create urgency for institutions to respond faster than much of their research collaboration infrastructure was designed to manage.

Since the 1980s, the structure and incentives within the research ecosystem have also shifted. Federal agencies, state governments, universities, industry, and philanthropic organizations now invest at significant scale, but under varying governance authorities, R&D timelines, and accountability structures. As funding sources and research performers have become more distributed across sectors, coordination rarely rests with a single institution. In this environment, the effectiveness of ambitious missions depends less on articulation and more on sustained alignment across the research enterprise.

Coordination is often presumed to follow from shared purpose. In practice, it rarely emerges without deliberate structure. Effective collaboration requires clearly defined roles, aligned approaches to intellectual property management and risk tolerance, transparent decision making, and reliable channels for information exchange. Without these elements, initiatives frequently revert to parallel efforts—particularly when leadership changes or fiscal pressures intervene. Even well-intentioned collaborations can stall when expectations are not aligned early and institutional incentives lack clear articulation.

Coordination capacity should be regarded as part of the nation’s research infrastructure. Trusted conveners and mechanisms, repeatable partnership models, and flexible leadership (enabled to operate across institutional settings) are not ancillary features; they are prerequisites for continuity. When these mechanisms are strong, the breadth of funding sources and technical expertise reinforces national capability. When weak, fragmentation reasserts itself.

Periods of turbulence do not diminish the importance of grand challenges. They test whether the institutional arrangements that support them can withstand volatility. The United States continues to possess extraordinary scientific depth and institutional range. Strengthening the mechanisms that sustain alignment across the research enterprise will determine how effectively long-standing national ambitions are pursued in a more complex funding and governance environment.

Anthony M. Boccanfuso

Martin Ho, Pramod P. Khargonekar, and Eoin O’Sullivan nicely summarize the importance of grand challenges, especially during disruptive times. We have supported the Depression Grand Challenge at UCLA for over a decade and have found the topic to be one of the most effective mechanisms for bringing researchers from multiple disciplines together.

Depression not only impacts a large fraction of the US population—almost everyone has either suffered from depression or knows someone who has—including students enrolled at universities across the country. At UCLA, university leadership supported workshops to help define the problem, multiple state and federal funders and foundations were attracted by the need to address the crisis, and university counseling and psychological services implemented research results that could be used to advise and treat students. In addition, industry recognized that the expanding field of wearable devices could remotely monitor and diagnose potential symptoms. A partnership with Apple led to data collection with over 3,000 participants. The data collected with Apple devices includes sleep, physical activity, heart rate, facial expressions to detect and monitor mood, energy levels, and anxiety. The hope is that this information will help users manage, or seek care for, mental health conditions.

In summary, the proverbial cast of thousands coalesced around the Depression Grand Challenge. It is difficult to imagine another framework that could have led to the successes we have experienced to address this disease.

Roger M. Wakimoto