Status
Challenge Status: Challenge is Active. This challenge is part of the Junior Academy and not open for general application.
Application Status: Open to Junior Academy Members
Key Dates
Challenge Begins: 02/24/2025
Challenge Closes: 04/27/2025
Solutions Due By: 04/27/2025
Winners Announced: 05/21/2025
Overview
Air quality has been a known health issue to people and cultures around the world for hundreds of years. Around 400 BC Hippocrates made the connection between disease and “miasma” (bad air). In 1952, the “Great Smog of London” reached peak pollution levels and precipitated the deaths of between 10,000 and 12,000 people as well as negative health outcomes for an estimated 100,000 people. Today air pollution is believed to account for 7 million deaths annually, most of which are the result of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including heart disease, lung disease, and cancer. In this challenge you will design a technical solution to address a key source of pollution in order to make a positive impact on NCDs. How could you take a scientific and design thinking approach to contribute to a sustainable and equitable shift in this ongoing environmental and health challenge?
Challenge
Identify or target a specific source of pollution and design a technical solution that would reduce or eliminate air pollutants while also reducing the impacts of one or more non-communicable diseases.
Consider the following when designing your solution:
- What pollution source will you address?
- Fossil fuel combustion? Which fossil fuel?
- Wildfires?
- Industry (Food, Agriculture, Fashion?
- Something else?
- What air pollutants will your solution minimize? Smog? Ozone? Carbon dioxide? Soot? Ammonia? Something else?
- How will you approach the problem? Will you take a community approach or an industry approach? What industry or industries will you tackle?
- How can your solution address equity issues in air quality and/or public health?
- How might you integrate community co-design into your solution?
- How might your solution be scaled to impact other regions or other countries?
- How can you keep the cost of your solution low enough to encourage implementation?
- How sustainable is your solution?
- What region or community might your solution impact the most?
- What public policy might be needed to support or implement your solution?
Success Evaluation Criteria
Solutions will be judged based on the following criteria:
- Innovation and Design Thinking: Is the design and approach unique and/or innovative? Does the design show a high degree of originality and imagination?
- Scientific Quality: Are the appropriate references and analytical methods used and are the insights derived correctly?
- Presentation Quality: Is this concept concisely and clearly explained? Are the findings/recommendations communicated clearly and persuasively?
- Commercial Viability/Potential: Does the solution have the potential to make a difference?
- Sustainability: What is the social impact on local communities? How does the solution incorporate positive environmental or social objectives? Is the solution in line with a sustainable or justice focused future?
- Teamwork and collaboration: Was the experience a collaborative endeavor? Was the knowledge gained from the experience reflected upon and tied back to a civic engagement mindset? (From Personal Reflections)
See the challenge rubric.
Sponsor
The Junior Academy is implemented by The New York Academy of Sciences and is supported by the J. Christopher Stevens Virtual Exchange Initiative (JCSVEI). JCSVEI is a U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs program administered by the Aspen Institute.