About Us

Hello! We are a group of first-year students at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who are part of a program known as Grand Challenges. In this class, we are tasked with finding a point of contention within complex world systems, and then creating a solution that can possibly ease this issue. The projects that we use within the class are a means of adapting how we think about and work for hard-to-grasp conceptual issues.

First, we would like to introduce you to the “wicked problem.” While this may sound like it is from “The Wizard of Oz,” this is in fact a designation for a specific type of issue. As a result of our own incomplete knowledge and people with differing opinions, as well as their entanglement with other problems and the global economy, these wicked problems are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to solve. Poverty, global warming, homelessness, all issues that we know exist, but we can never seem to agree what to do about them.

We divide these problems into different categories: environment, energy, disasters, food, etc; where groups can more easily focus on specific problems to deep dive into. We got together as a group as a result of our collective interest in the environment and we eventually landed on food waste.

Hopefully, with this page you will understand our thinking process as we make an honest attempt to understand these wicked problems.

-James, Ethan, Michael, Jeannie, Cynthia & Charlie