Historically, experimental and computational mechanics have been viewed as tools to support others to do bigger and better things. As the result of this age-old description and the fast changing technology landscape, relevance and competitiveness among other disciplines have sometimes become issues that the both the experimental and computational mechanics community must work hard to reflect on. Because of fast improvement of computing power in the last two decades, computational mechanics has taken on a new lease in life. However, working primarily within the confinement of the mechanics community, many challenges and opportunities have been lost. To take the experimental and computational mechanics to the forefront, the community must take note and be cognizant to the advancement in the other areas of sciences, such as biology, physics, chemistry and electronics and photonics. Most importantly, the community must work in concert for the advancement in these other areas for the development of innovations through multidisciplinary collaborations and technology integration. It is the intent of this paper to explore this issue.
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