  This paper reviews the new highly interdisciplinary research field studying
the behavior of condensed matter systems exposed to radiation. The paper
highlights several relevant examples of recent advances in the field and
provides a roadmap for the development of the field in the next decade.
Condensed matter systems exposed to radiation may have very different natures,
being inorganic, organic or biological, finite or infinite, be composed of many
different molecular species or materials, existing in different phases (solid,
liquid, gaseous or plasma) and operating under different thermodynamic
conditions. The essential and novel element of this research is that, despite
the vast diversity of such systems, many of the key phenomena related to the
behavior of irradiated systems (such as radiation-induced damage, mechanisms of
damage repair and control, radiation protection, etc.) are very similar and can
be understood based on the same fundamental theoretical principles and
computational approaches. One of the essential features of the aforementioned
phenomena concerns their multiscale nature as the manifestation of the
radiation-induced effects occurring at different spatial and temporal scales
ranging from the atomic to the macroscopic. The multiscale nature of the
effects and similarity of their manifestation in systems of different origins
necessarily brings together different disciplines, such as physics, chemistry,
biology, materials and nano-science, and biomedical research, demonstrating
numerous interlinks and commonalities between them. This research field is
highly relevant to many novel and emerging technologies and medical
applications.
