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Glasses have been an integral part of human life for more than 2000 years. Despite several years of research and analysis, some fundamental and practical questions on glasses still remain unanswered. While most of the earlier approaches were based on (i) expert knowledge and intuition, (ii) Edisonian trial and error, or (iii) physics-driven modeling and analysis, recent studies suggest that data-driven techniques, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), can provide fresh perspectives to tackle some of these questions. In this article, we identify 21 grand challenges in glass science, the solutions of which are either enabling AI and ML or enabled by AI and ML to accelerate the field of glass science. The challenges presented here range from fundamental questions related to glass formation and composition–processing–property relationships to industrial problems such as automated flaw detection in glass manufacturing. We believe that the present article will instill enthusiasm among the readers to explore some of the grand challenges outlined here and to discover many more challenges that can advance the field of glass science, engineering, and technology. 

This paper demonstrates the application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools to explore large libraries of documents and to correlate heuristic associations between text descriptions in figure captions with interpretations of images and figures. The use of visualization tools based on NLP methods permits one to quickly assess the extent of the research described in the literature related to a specific topic. The authors demonstrate how the use of NLP methods on only the figure captions without having to navigate the entire text of a document can provide an accelerated assessment of the literature in a given domain.