First of all, I think this was a great talk, I never lost interest in what Gerbrand Ceder was saying. He does a great job explaining why Materials Science is important for society in general, not just scientists.
I think using computers instead of experiments to develop topics related to Physics is plain wrong. We need experiments! However, what should we do when our experiments are inefficient? When we just don’t have the right conditions or equipment what kind of experiments can we actually do?
In that sense I think is a great idea to star working on computers! and to do research on methods that could help us figure out new ways to think about materials. I think is a realistic idea saying that we can design new and important materials just using computers. Go Physics!