Research & Innovation

Grand Challenges:

Advancing computing innovation in service to humanity

Allen School researchers have coalesced around a set of grand challenges that we and our partners are uniquely positioned to address while expanding the frontiers of computing.

Universities such as ours are particularly suited to tackling these grand challenges due to our ability to pursue ambitious, cross-cutting research motivated by the public good. And the Allen School is positioned to lead the way by leveraging our core values of excellence, innovation and collaboration across our school, the UW campus, and beyond to tackle complex research problems with proven impact.

While we pursue significant and varied research beyond the priorities highlighted below, the grand challenges offer an opportunity to leverage our world-leading expertise and multidisciplinary collaborations — mobilizing a variety of perspectives to advance innovation in service to society.

Learn more about the grand challenges below and explore the people, partners and projects that are moving us toward scalable solutions that will benefit individuals and communities here in Washington and around the globe.

The Grand Challenges are supported in part by the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering Endowed Fund for Excellence.

GRAND CHALLENGE 1

How do we design AI in a way that is transparent and equally beneficial to all?

AI has the potential to increase productivity, enhance creativity, and accelerate discovery. It also has the potential to generate unintended consequences for individuals and communities who don’t fit a default user profile. AI is already transforming the way many organizations and people work in Washington state owing to the concentration of companies at the forefront of AI development, and the trend is expected to spread. Allen School researchers are advancing the state of the art in AI research with an emphasis on open source, open data, and open processes, to enable both deeper, broader scientific understanding and broader participation in designing AI for the needs and preferences of different populations — while mitigating potential harms.

GRAND CHALLENGE 2

How do we design technology to be accessible at its inception — not as an add-on?

In 2023, more than one million people in Washington state — nearly 14% of the population — had a disability. While disability is part of so many individuals’ lived experiences, the majority of technology design addresses accessibility as an afterthought, if it addresses it at all. For example, many AI systems generate code and media that is inaccessible or biased, yet data about disability and accessibility is lacking; most mobile apps and websites are inaccessible, yet accessibility verification and repair is neither well understood nor supported by modern tools; and repairing this puts a high legal and cost burden on all of the organizations adopting such technologies. Allen School researchers are pursuing “accessibility first” to ensure all technologies and related educational experiences reflect the vast array of human experiences and preferences — which ultimately benefits everyone.

GRAND CHALLENGE 3

How do we build computing systems that can be trusted to do exactly what we want them to do, every time?

From elections to energy grids, society depends on computers that must be safe, secure, and reliable: not just 90% or even 99% of the time, but every time. That’s where verification comes in: using math to prove software always behaves as intended. In the lab, verification has been shown to produce applications that are dramatically safer and more reliable. But real-world code is so complex, most of it can’t be fully verified today, and the rise of unpredictable AI and “vibe coding” only raises the stakes. Allen School researchers are working to make verification practical across the stack — from chips and compilers, to cryptographic protocols and ML-powered apps.

GRAND CHALLENGE 4

How do we create technologies that sustain people and the planet?

Advances in AI, remote sensing and other technologies offer new ways to anticipate and mitigate environmental concerns, from dwindling biodiversity to intensifying wildfires. But these same technologies can present concerns of their own in the form of electronic waste, pollution and energy consumption. Allen School researchers are developing new materials and techniques to maximize technology’s potential while minimizing its environmental footprint.

GRAND CHALLENGE 5

How do we make high-quality cognitive and mental health support available to all?

Over a billion people worldwide live with a mental health condition and/or cognitive disability, but only a fraction receive the care and support that they need to fully participate in daily life. Cost and a shortage of behavioral health and other providers are two of the biggest factors that prevent people from accessing a diagnosis and treatment, and that access can vary widely based on someone’s location. Meanwhile, a shortage of data hinders society’s ability to adequately address these challenges. Allen School researchers are working with clinicians and community partners to explore how technology could be used to help overcome these barriers and massively improve access to high-quality cognitive and mental health support — which will increase the well-being of individuals and communities here in Washington and around the world.

GRAND CHALLENGE 6

How do we ensure the security, privacy, and safety of people and communities as technology permeates society?

As technology permeates every aspect of our lives, it has the potential to fundamentally change many things for the better — but realizing the potential benefits also requires sustained, thoughtful focus on the security, privacy, and safety risks that may and do arise from new technologies and their applications in new contexts. Anticipating, uncovering, documenting, mitigating, and avoiding such risks is an inter-disciplinary endeavor, requiring advances in technology, theory, design, law and policy — as well as in our understanding of how individuals and communities relate to technology. We bring together researchers and educators across the Allen School and the University of Washington whose work aims to lead us towards a safer, more secure, and more privacy-preserving future through technologies that ultimately better serve people and society.

GRAND CHALLENGE 7

How do we advance new computational tools to unlock the mysteries of the brain?

Recent technological advances enable us to measure, model, and manipulate neural activity in living brains with unprecedented precision and scale. These capabilities promise to reveal the distributed brain-wide neural computations that underlie cognition, flexible behavior, and biological intelligence. Allen School researchers are developing innovative theory, modeling, and machine learning techniques to realize this vision, including new computational theories of brain function, computational tools for complex data analysis and experimental design, and AI-enabled brain co-processors for next-generation brain-computer interfaces. This research could open up new avenues for diagnosing and treating neurological and psychiatric conditions that affect millions of people in Washington state and billions of people worldwide. And as technologies for neural data collection and neural interfaces become more powerful, we’re committed to ensuring they are developed and deployed in ways that are secure, privacy-preserving, fair and broadly accessible.

What is a "grand challenge"?

The Allen School defines a grand challenge as one that…

Draws upon multiple areas of computing
Calls for open, multidisciplinary collaboration intrinsic to a university setting
Can benefit from our combination of expertise, our connections across industry, government, and the non-profit sector, and our deep roots in Washington state
Has measurable goals that are ambitious yet attainable
Will generate positive societal impacts — locally, nationally and globally

Why the Allen School?

Allen School researchers bring expertise that is both broad and deep, spanning the entire computing stack. Our approach to innovation is inherently interdisciplinary, and we have a proud history of leveraging collaborations across our school, the UW campus, and beyond to tackle complex research problems with proven impact.

Get in touch!

If you’re interested in exploring potential research collaborations or other ways that you can support this work, contact us at grand-challenges@cs.washington.edu

Inside the Allen School: 'Grand challenges' shaping the future of computer science

At the Allen School’s 2025 Research Showcase and Open House, school leaders celebrated the work of faculty and student researchers — and offered a blueprint for collaboratively tackling a set of human-centered problems for even greater impact.

Highlights

UW News

Open-source AI model synthesizes current scientific research

In a paper published in the journal Nature, a team of Allen School and Ai2 researchers unveiled OpenScholar, a system that can cite scientific papers as accurately as human experts and incorporate new research after it has been trained.

Allen School News

Allen School and UCSD researchers earn USENIX Test of Time Award

In 2011, a team of researchers that included Allen School professor and alum Franziska Roesner published a paper detailing how they could remotely take control of a car. Their work, which inspired new motor vehicle security standards, received the USENIX Test of Time Award.

Allen School News

FlashInfer earns Best Paper Award for speeding up LLM performance

A team of University of Washington and NVIDIA researchers developed FlashInfer, a versatile inference kernel library that can help make large language models faster and more adaptable, and received a Best Paper Award at MLSys 2025 for their work.

UW News

ChatGPT is biased against resumes implying a disability

Researchers in the Allen School’s Make4All Group found that ChatGPT consistently ranked resumes with disability-related honors and credentials lower than the same resumes without them. By customizing the tool with written instructions, they could reduce — but not completely eliminate — such bias.

UW News

New circuit boards can be repeatedly recycled

Allen School professor Vikram Iyer and collaborators developed a new type of printable circuit board, called a vPCB, using a cutting-edge type of polymer that can be repeatedly recycled to reduce e-waste.

Allen School News

Researchers develop human-AI collaboration tool for mental health support

A team led by Allen School professor Tim Althoff created HAILEY — short for Human-AI coLlaboration approach for EmpathY — as a tool for facilitating increased empathy in online peer-to-peer mental health support conversations.

Image Credits