Exascale computers are the world’s fastest supercomputers. They hold a performance of at least one exaflop, or one quintillion calculations per second. Combined with simulation, they are positioned to help tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges, which pertain to topics such as national security, climate, medicine, energy, and water.

At the intersection between quantum mechanics and computer and information science lies at quantum information science (QIS). QIS seeks to understand how information is processed and transmitted using quantum mechanical principles. It is the merger of quantum mechanics and information and computation theory. QIS comprises four major areas: quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing, and quantum foundational science.

Bioinformatics uses computers to make sense of the vast amount of data researchers can now glean from living things. These things can be as seemingly simple as a single cell or as complex as the human immune response. Bioinformatics is a tool that helps researchers decipher the human genome, look at the global picture of a biological system, develop new biotechnologies, or perfect new legal and forensic techniques, and it will be used to create the personalized medicine of the future.

Advanced computing testbeds, the proving grounds for new machines, are central to the development of next-generation computers. They allow researchers to explore a complex and non-linear design space and facilitate the evaluation of new computing technologies in terms of performance and efficiency on critical scientific workloads. These “laboratories of machines,” in which multiple components are available for experimentation, are critical to the next greatest advancements in computation.

Fentanyl analogs are illicit—and often deadly—alterations of the medically prescribed drug fentanyl. The analogs have similar—but not the same—chemical structure, and they mimic the pharmacological effects of the original drug.