The Horizons Challenge is a national competition from xFoundry, run in partnership with NASA and open to students at any accredited North American university or community college. Teams of two to five pick one of four focus areas and spend the semester finding and validating a problem worth solving in it:

• Predictive User Interfaces: smart interfaces that know what you need before you do.
• Human Performance Monitoring: health and safety tools that tell us when we are at risk.
• Autonomous Asset Inspection: AI that warns before failure in infrastructure, systems and parts.
• Adaptive Learning: systems that learn, adapt and reconfigure in high-stress environments.

Teams research and analyze the problem rather than build a product, then pitch what they find to industry leaders. Each team has to span at least two disciplines, drawn from technology, entrepreneurship, arts and athletics, marketing, and science, so this is not a competition only for engineers. There is no cost to enter. Fall registration runs through November 27, submissions are due December 19, and finals are at the NEXPLORE Summit in April 2027. Register at connexions.xfoundry.org. Full details at xfoundry.org/horizons-challenge.