Scientific Anticipatory Briefs

Expert-backed reports provide, over selected scientific emerging topics, an overview of possible breakthroughs at five, ten and 25 years, with considerations on their impacts on people, society and the planet.

Our mission is to anticipate scientific and technological breakthroughs and identify their potential impact on people, society and the planet. It does this by collaborating with internationally renowned researchers (Academic Moderators and Experts) in four scientific frontier issues (Platforms) with a view to determining what the current state of knowledge is, what the next frontiers will be, how a given scientific or technological field might develop in the coming years, and how that development could affect our objectives.

The four initially chosen scientific frontier issues (Platforms):

Quantum Revolution & Advanced Artificial Intelligence
Human Augmentation
Eco-regeneration & Geoengineering
Science & Diplomacy

The results of this scouting work in each of these areas are summarized in Scientific Anticipatory Briefs (SABs), which provide science-backed expert views on:

the current state of the art in a given field
major trends and likely breakthroughs five, ten and 25 years out – and why they matter
the possible impacts and consequences on people, society and the planet.

These assessments are carried out through GESDA’s Academic Forum, which provides the expertise and networks to continuously spot and address relevant topics at the frontier of science and technology. The pool of SABs will therefore also be continuously updated.

The SABs will be published as articles in high-quality, well-regarded scientific journals.

A first series of SABs has been written on the following topics and is currently being finalized. You can read the abstracts here: