I’ve been working on the study of materials from a DFT perspective and I can tell this is just a race against time and the ones with more computational power. Studying materials with computational techniques can give an enormous advantage and savings compared to studying them experimentally, however the limitation on computational power is what worries me the most. Not everyone has access to these supercomputers, and most are politically protected.
Sure, designing materials could be the solution to many human problems, but only when done responsibly.