Will Patrick -- Rapid Evaluator, Google X

(https://plus.google.com/104...)

"Moonshot Thinking." Moonshots live in the gray ar...

Problem: Synthetic biology has the potential to create new organisms that could do an infinite number of things. But the cost of synthesizing DNA is currently prohibitively expensive.

Solution: Austen has developed a new...

Problem: What if war could be fought using technology that's more humane and could acheive political or tactical goals without killing civilians?

Solution: Targeted military force could do limited harm or potentially do g...

Problem: Modern, global manufacturing utilizes low-cost wage labor and mass production seperating the designers & innovators from the fabrication of their products.

Solution: What if innovators had the tools to design, pr...

Problem: Cancer

Solution: Nanorobots that deliver cancer drugs specifically to tumors, allowing patients to be treated by several drugs at once.

Technology: Building on the field of DNA origami, Shawn Douglas has develop...

Problem: Media portrayals of women and girls in family television is negaitvely impacting young children -- both girls and boys. Most films have significant gender biases and imbalances -- we the audience are accustomed to...

Problem: Energy access & climate change

Solution: A 100MW compact fusion reactor that runs on plentiful and cheap deuterium and tritium (isotopes of hydrogen).

Breakthrough technology: Charles Chase and his team at Lock...

Problem: The terahertz range (300 GHz to 3 THz) is the last part of the electromagnetic spectrum that does not have an inexpensive, accessible technology to emit and detect the light.

Solution: Use a number of inexpensive...

Problem: Global annual production of municipal solid waste (MSW) is expected to grow from 1.3 billion tonnes today to 9.8 billion tonnes in 2050. That waste represents 4-5 billion barrels of oil, about 2/3 of the oil the ...

Problem: The price of solar electricity is still higher than electricity from coal or natural gas. Price parity or perhaps making solar cheaper than fossil fuel is required for widespread adoption of solar.

Solution: Bill...

Problem: Moore's law won't continue forever. Transistors are now so small that they have reached the quantum scale and it will simply not be physically possible to make them smaller.

Solution: Many people have proposed o...

Problem: 8% of the world''s water supply and one third of the world's non-ice landmass is used for raising livestock for meat and leather. At least 18% of the greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere are from the livestock...

Problem: Plastics are useful and inexpensive but are manufactured out of fossil fuels, used once and then thrown away and create systemic health & environmental health risks.

Solution: Develop biodegradable plastics that ...

Problem: Malaria has killed over 10 million people in the last decade in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Solution: Eliminate the malaria's vectors, a handful of species of mosquitoes, by developing and disseminating infertile male mo...

Problem: If humanity is to move off Earth and become an interplanetary species, it will need an economic reason to do so.

Solution: Near-earth asteroids contain (literally) trillions of dollars worth of resources and mat...

Problem: Wind and solar energy sources simply can't produce power at all times. Energy storage is needed to store energy from the sun and wind when it's produced for use later. No economical, widespread energy storage meth...

Problem: 1/3 Americans born today will live to 100. That's really great but cognitive decline begins at 30 and it's just a matter of time before dementia develops. Alzheimer's specifically accounts for 70% of dementia case...

Problem: Actuators in robots are heavy & clunky and limit mobility, dexterity and speed.

Solution: Create materials and actuators that are soft - that act more like muscles and tissues found in nature that can exert trem...