World Solve

Healthcare equipment often uses sterile, complex, or regulated components that are difficult to reuse. Future systems need to reduce waste while preserving infection control and clinical reliability. Affected communities must have meaningful control over data, revenue, deployment decisions, and the right to refuse harmful applications. The research opportunity is to define measurable success criteria, test the approach in realistic settings, identify failure modes, and create a pathway from prototype to accountable deployment.

Fabrics that log the heat signature of every touch create persistent records of physical interaction. The problem is preventing wearable materials from becoming continuous contact surveillance devices.

The problem of missing books, devices and learning materials continues to affect hundreds of millions of people and undermines progress on multiple Sustainable Development Goals. Existing responses remain fragmented, under-resourced and poorly adapted to local contexts. A strong solution must operate effectively under severe constraints of skilled personnel, infrastructure, electricity and connectivity. It should define clear measurable outcomes, identify possible unintended harms, and demonstrate how the intervention can be sustained by local institutions long after initial funding ends.

Companion drones assigned at birth that cannot be permanently powered down raise questions of autonomy, surveillance, and liability. The challenge is giving individuals genuine authority over devices that have been present since infancy without creating safety gaps.

Post-quantum authentication must work on inexpensive devices, intermittent networks, and systems with limited technical support. A practical solution must avoid forcing vulnerable populations to replace all hardware at once. The solution must work with limited capital, intermittent services, and local maintenance capacity. The research opportunity is to define measurable success criteria, test the approach in realistic settings, identify failure modes, and create a pathway from prototype to accountable deployment.

Many institutions cannot inventory where vulnerable cryptography is used across old software, embedded devices, archives, and vendor systems. The future challenge is completing secure migration before quantum-capable attackers can exploit long-lived encrypted data. The solution must work with limited capital, intermittent services, and local maintenance capacity. The research opportunity is to define measurable success criteria, test the approach in realistic settings, identify failure modes, and create a pathway from prototype to accountable deployment.

Voice-activated devices can sometimes misinterpret background conversation as an intentional wake command, inadvertently recording or transmitting private moments. Eliminating this risk entirely while keeping devices responsive remains an unresolved design tradeoff.

Some websites secretly run scripts that use a visitor's device to mine cryptocurrency without their knowledge, slowing down devices and consuming electricity without consent. Consistent detection and blocking of this practice remains incomplete across browsers.

Networks of compromised devices, often unknowing to their owners, can be rented out cheaply on illicit markets for attacks like large-scale website disruptions. Dismantling these persistent botnet infrastructures remains an ongoing cybersecurity challenge.

Many connected devices become permanently vulnerable once their manufacturer stops issuing security updates, yet the devices often remain in active use for years afterward. A sustainable way to keep abandoned devices secure remains unresolved.

Implanted medical devices like pacemakers increasingly connect wirelessly for monitoring, but security protections for these devices haven't kept pace with the sensitivity of what's at stake if they're compromised. Closing this gap remains an urgent but underaddressed challenge.

Companies sometimes stop providing security patches for older but still commonly used software or devices, leaving users vulnerable without clear warning. Establishing consistent, enforced support timelines remains an unresolved industry practice.

Consumer-grade detection tools for hidden surveillance devices remain unreliable and often expensive, leaving many people vulnerable to covert monitoring in their own homes or workplaces. Making effective detection accessible to everyday consumers remains unresolved.

Consumer wearables can track things like heart rate and sleep, but their accuracy still falls short of clinical medical equipment for many important health metrics. Closing this accuracy gap remains an ongoing hardware and software challenge.

Many websites and applications are still built without full consideration for users who rely on screen readers, alternative input devices, or other accessibility tools. Making accessibility a foundational design principle rather than a later patch remains inconsistent.

Documents with rich formatting, fonts, or embedded content can still look different or break entirely when opened in different software or on different devices. A truly universal, faithful format remains elusive despite decades of digital document use.

Smart home products from different brands frequently fail to communicate properly with each other, forcing consumers to juggle multiple apps and hubs. A universal, trusted communication standard remains incompletely adopted across the industry.

Current augmented reality devices are either too bulky and heavy for comfortable daily use, or too limited in capability to be genuinely useful. Achieving both comfort and power in the same device remains unresolved.

Fake or substandard electronic parts sometimes slip into supply chains for critical equipment, including medical devices and vehicles, and current detection methods are neither fast nor cheap enough to catch every case. This creates hidden safety risks across many industries.

Updating software running power grids or medical devices carries real risk of unexpected downtime, but delaying updates leaves known security gaps open longer. Balancing update speed with operational safety remains an unresolved tradeoff.