In recent years, paradigm shift in science gradually becomes a hot topic in the scientific community. Meanwhile, tackling global challenges such as climate change, natural disasters, and serious diseases is also quite urgent.However, these two aspects are often touched separately. For the former, discussions focus on general trends, and for the latter, more considerations are given to detailed issues. Unification of the two aspects could propel the two aspects in a synergistic way, and breakthroughs might be made more efficiently. The key is to find the bridge.

Mesoscience proposes that complexity arises from an inevitable compromise between competing factors, such as different mechanisms striving for dominance. Mesoscience bridges bottom-up and top-down approaches through multi-objective optimisation under constraints.

Over 30 top scientists from the USA, UK, Australia, China, et al. are teaming up in Beijing for a three-day meeting to focus on the future development and application of Mesoscience.

Mesoscience places emphasis on mesoscale, a scale between the micro- and macro-scale, to identify spatiotemporal complex structures of complex systems that are widely investigated by scientists.

Scientists attending a latest mesoscience conference, The Preparatory Meeting of the International Panel of Mesoscience, call for more people to engage in the study, and to verify its generality with more case studies.

自然界是复杂多样的。一直以来，人们致力于通过了解越来越多的细节认识复杂性，但是未能如愿，比如，基因组学的发展仍难以揭示生命的奥妙，对基本粒子的认识也还没有彻底解决材料结构与性能之间的关系。另一方面，现代科学在向基本粒子以及可观测宇宙两个极端扩展的同时，发现了存在于不同层次的各种复杂性。层次复杂性往往表现为多尺度结构，而这些多尺度结构无一例外是由对应层次的大量单元（单元是相邻上游层次的系统，反之亦然）之间相互作用所致，呈现出复杂的时空特性。这种介于单元尺度和系统尺度之间的复杂结构称为介尺度结构，其随着条件的变化，会出现多样的变化，甚至突变。这种多样性与层次密切相关，所以复杂性和多样性的多层次特征必须引起重视。随着现代科学技术的发展，不同层次的研究构成了不同的分支学科。各分支学科的困难几乎全部集中在认识其所在层次介尺度结构的形成原因、控制机制及其对该层次系统性能的影响等方面，也就是说，介尺度复杂性是各学科面临的共同挑战！