The world has problems; universities have departments. Real-world problems are interdisciplinary and call for creativity, communication, cross-cultural knowledge, and other 21st century skills. This session focuses on new methods to engage young people in science using real-world problems instead of traditional subject-based teaching. The examples featured in this session are nontraditional because they involve new partnerships between the traditional educational institutions and industry and other organizations. They all aim at motivating young people to use science to solve global problems, not just to do science for its own sake. The panel will look at a unique program between schools and universities that aims at assisting young pupils doing peer-reviewed science as well as "mass experiments" as an innovative way of using pupils to map unknown data in close collaboration with researchers. In addition, this session will explore lessons learned from student research stimulated by various U.S. science festivals. All of the projects mentioned can be replicated by other countries.