At one of the first computer conferences I went to(HAL2001) there was a talk on "wetware hacking". The guy giving the talk was a neuroscientist I believe and he was literally begging the programmers in attendance to give his field a try since they had so many programable tasks and no one able or willing to do them. Unfortunately he fell short of giving advice on paths into the field if you aren't already in academia.

The problems these people are solving though are definitely things that myself and a lot of my friends would find interesting problemsets. I think its just a matter of making it accessible.