That's not what science is, though. Science is about pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. Science isn't about having a problem and trying to find a solution -- that's engineering, which is informed by science.

The problem is that most of our problems aren't really science problems. Or at least the thing holding them up isn't the lack of practical applied scientists. They're political ones. We've known what we needed to do about climate change for decades but their are capitalists who stand to lose from doing anything about it, so we don't. We have plenty of housing, it's just being hoarded by people who do nothing with it but extract free money from people who are desperate to have a place to live. We have amazing medicine, but corporations are able to abuse IP laws to price gouge people who need it to live.

A scientist or engineer could come up with some amazing sci-fi tech that has the potential to save us and capitalists would find some way to make it bleed us dry.

Whenever you get this kind of thoughts, take a moment to also think about the maths behind your CT and MRI scans, which originated from early radio astronomy. Alas, I don't have a source for this other than it was said by an astronomy professor during a lesson for an exam I never even attempted.