The Celebration of Science weekend demonstrates how America's previous investments in bioscience have produced remarkable advances in medicine that address the enormous human and economic toll of disease. But as the distinguished scientific leaders on this panel will discuss, the future applications of bioscience also include a wide range of non-medical areas that affect the lives and prosperity of people around the world. These include the use of microbes to produce energy and to abate the adverse effects of fossil fuels; agricultural applications that expand the supply of nutritious food and provide markets for poverty-stricken farmers in emerging countries; water purification; early identification of potential pandemics; and antidotes to pathogens released by bioterrorists. Each of these issues profoundly affects economic growth.