According to MIT Solve, the climate crisis requires dramatic action from all stakeholders, and a thriving zero-carbon world will require rapid shifts for mitigation and adaptation. A billion people lack decent housing, while current housing drives 6 percent of global emissions from construction and 16 percent from electricity and heating. Simultaneously, the world saw $268 billion in losses from natural catastrophes in 2022—climate-linked droughts, floods, and heat waves that disproportionately affect countries with low cumulative emissions. With strained disaster response and recovery systems, communities need new approaches to build good housing at scale, plus ways to integrate climate risk into planning across all decisions.

The MIT Solve community seeks eight technology-based solutions with the potential to help communities create quality low-carbon homes at scale or adapt to more extreme weather. Solve seeks solutions that: reduce emissions from multifamily housing during construction, operation, and end-of-life while addressing barriers to local adoption; support informal communities in upgrading to more resilient housing, including financing, design, and low-carbon materials or energy sources; help communities understand and incorporate climate risk in infrastructure design and planning, including through improved data collection and analysis, integration with existing systems, and aligning financial incentives such as insurance; and adapt land and coastal areas to more extreme weather, including through climate-smart agriculture or restoring natural ecosystems.

All teams selected for Solve’s Global Challenges will receive a $10,000 grant. Additionally, the GSR Foundation will award a prize to solutions that use innovative technology to address pressing issues in their communities and the world (preference will be given to solutions that use blockchain to improve financial inclusion). Up to $200,000 will be awarded across several Solver teams from any of Solve’s 2023 Global Challenges.

Additionally, supported by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, the AI for Humanity Prize is open to solutions leveraging data science, artificial intelligence, and/or machine learning to benefit humanity. Up to $150,000 in funding will be awarded across several Solver teams from any of Solve’s 2023 Global Challenges.

For complete program guidelines and application instructions, see the MIT Solve website.

Deadline: May 9, 2023

According to MIT Solve, more people today are interested in community-focused careers and activities, yet many, especially youth, feel they do not have a voice or choose not to participate in community, state, national, or global governance. A lack of formal opportunities to learn and practice civic skills is linked with drastic variations in access to civic education worldwide. As examples from Malawi, Pakistan, and the United States show, the aims and strategies of civic curricula differ across countries and often exclude important components like critical thinking and participatory, hands-on learning. While many countries face these and other unique challenges, they also hold valuable lessons for how diverse cultural and linguistic traditions, leadership, and knowledge can and should be included in a more holistic understanding of citizen development.

The MIT Solve community seeks eight technology-enabled solutions that help learners effectively act on community and global issues by deepening civic knowledge and practicing collaborative problem-solving. Solve seeks solutions that: provide access to improved civic action learning in a wide range of contexts with educator support for classroom-based approaches and community-building opportunities for out-of-school, community-based approaches; help learners acquire key civic skills and knowledge, including how to assess the credibility of information, engage across differences, understand one’s agency, and engage with issues of power, privilege, and injustice; build core social-emotional learning skills, including self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making; and enable learners to bridge civic knowledge with taking action by understanding real-world problems, building networks, organizing plans for collective action, and exploring prosocial careers.

All teams selected for Solve’s Global Challenges will receive a $10,000 grant. Additionally, the GSR Foundation will award a prize to solutions that use innovative technology to address pressing issues in their communities and the world (preference will be given to solutions that use blockchain to improve financial inclusion). Up to $200,000 will be awarded across several Solver teams from any of Solve’s 2023 Global Challenges.

Additionally, supported by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, the AI for Humanity Prize is open to solutions leveraging data science, artificial intelligence, and/or machine learning to benefit humanity. Up to $150,000 in funding will be awarded across several Solver teams from any of Solve’s 2023 Global Challenges.

For complete program guidelines and application instructions, see the MIT Solve website.

Deadline: May 9, 2023

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is the latest in a series of infectious disease emergencies, including cholera, Ebola, SARS, Chikungunya, HIV/AIDS, and influenza. While scientists and drug developers, with support from governments and multilateral organizations, have been rushing to produce, test, and deliver vaccines and treatments, tech innovators also have a crucial role to play, both in the near term and to prevent and mitigate future disease outbreaks.

In the near term, the world needs improved solutions for prevention, accurate detection, and rapid response. MIT Solve, through its Health Security & Pandemics Challenge, is seeking tech innovations that can slow and track the spread of an emerging outbreak — for example, by improving individual hygiene, developing low-cost rapid diagnostics, analyzing data that informs decision making, and providing tools that protect health workers.

At the same time, the global community cannot only respond to disease outbreaks reactively. Climate change and globalization leave us ever more vulnerable to future epidemics and pandemics, and it’s critical to be prepared. For that reason (and others), Solve is seeking solutions focused on preventative and mitigation measures that strengthen access to affordable primary healthcare systems, enhance disease surveillance systems, and improve healthcare supply chains.

All solutions selected for this global challenge will receive a $10,000 grant funded by Solve. Solver teams will be selected by a panel of cross-sector judges at the Solve Challenge Finals during the meeting of UN General Assembly in New York City on September 20, 2020.

For more details on the Health Security & Pandemics Challenge, see the MIT Solve website.

Deadline: June 18, 2020

Learn more and apply: https://solve.mit.edu/challenges/health-security-pandemics