America’s big names in engineering, as well as millions of Internet users around the world, are being asked to weigh in with their picks for the greatest technological challenges of the next century — a nine-month process that could give birth to new research initiatives.

The National Academy of Engineering project, called the “Grand Challenges for Engineering” program, is aimed at gathering up all those ideas and distilling them into a list of 20 puzzles for engineers to solve.

The comments will be winnowed down, then reviewed by an 18-member blue-ribbon committee headed by former Defense Secretary William Perry. Among the other members are Google co-founder Larry Page, genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter and millionaire inventors Dean Kamen and Ray Kurzweil.