In an ideal world, powerful scientific discoveries would emerge from collaborations built on expertise that crosses disciplines, provoke audacious concepts, and drive impactful applications. Bold ideas would be sought, funded, and celebrated. Students and trainees of all backgrounds and life experiences would receive education that conveys the wonder of science and the power of evidence-based reasoning. Incentives and rewards during graduate and postdoctoral training, and throughout professional academic careers, would motivate and promote creative thinking and risk-taking. Our scientific culture would embrace diversity and those from underrepresent­ed backgrounds, prioritizing the inclusion of a rich blend of perspectives that would drive innovation, and accelerate discovery and application.

Instead of this ideal, however, today’s scientific enterprise is fragmented by blockades large and small, intentional and inadvertent. Our science enterprise persists at a moment when the global community is confronted by existential challenges in health, energy, environment, food, and security. Those challenges will be met only by breakthrough scientific discoveries and coordinated, directed delivery of transformative technologies, unconstrained by conceptual, social, economic, or bureaucratic boundaries. Indeed, it is encouraging that despite the barriers, some revolutionary strategies and technologies that promise impacts in those challenge areas are on the horizon; we shall be stimulated in learning of some of those at this meeting. To advance toward Science Without Walls, the theme of the 2024 AAAS Annual Meeting, we shall explore a wide range of problem areas, and aspirations, and proposals for addressing them.