GDEST Program Objectives The National Academies conducts the Global Dialogues series in order to promote mutually beneficial scientific exchanges between American researchers and their foreign counterparts. Each meeting addresses a single topic, focusing on new or emerging research directions, prospective challenges, and promising approaches rather than completed work. The dialogues will provide opportunities for junior investigators to present their work through poster sessions and for all researchers to develop collaborations with their foreign counterparts. Unedited records of each meeting will be published on the National Academies’ website. The first meeting took place in Japan and focused on the future of sensors and sensor systems. A second meeting in Germany focused on quantum information and coherence, while the third meeting in the series brought together Chinese and American researchers to discuss new genomics tools for combating infectious diseases. A fourth meeting focusing on Agricultural Biotechnology is scheduled for Chennai, India on October 4-6, 2006. GDEST has the following objectives: To provide leading U.S. and foreign science and engineering researchers in cutting edge fields an opportunity to explore research directions and challenges with their counterparts having outstanding capacity in those disciplines; To provide U.S. researchers with exposure to a broad cross-cutting sample of scientists in the country or region, including the most promising junior investigators, in order to facilitate future international collaborations; and To identify common interests between current and future U.S. and foreign research leaders in selected emerging fields.