2024 Contest Now Accepting Entries!

Submit your best new product ideas for a chance at $25,000, other great prizes, and global recognition. If you already are registered, log in to access the entry form. Otherwise, click here to get started.

Help build a better tomorrow

Since Tech Briefs magazine launched the Create the Future Design contest in 2002 to recognize and reward engineering innovation, over 15,000 design ideas have been submitted by engineers, students, and entrepreneurs in more than 100 countries. Join the innovators who dared to dream big by entering your ideas today.

Read About Past Winners’ Success Stories

Special Report spotlights the eight top entries in 2023 as well as past winners whose ideas are now in the market, making a difference in the world.

Click here to read more

A ‘Create the Future’ Winner Featured on ‘Here’s an Idea’

Spinal cord injury affects 17,000 Americans and 700,000 people worldwide each year. A research team at NeuroPair, Inc. won the Grand Prize in the 2023 Create the Future Design Contest for a revolutionary approach to spinal cord repair. In this Here’s an Idea podcast episode, Dr. Johannes Dapprich, NeuroPair’s CEO and founder, discusses their groundbreaking approach that addresses a critical need in the medical field, offering a fast and minimally invasive solution to a long-standing problem.

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Thank you from our Sponsors

“At COMSOL, we are very excited to recognize innovators and their important work this year. We are grateful for the opportunity to support the Create the Future Design Contest, which is an excellent platform for designers to showcase their ideas and products in front of a worldwide audience. Best of luck to all participants!”

— Bernt Nilsson, Senior Vice President of Marketing, COMSOL, Inc.

“From our beginnings, Mouser has supported engineers, innovators and students. We are proud of our longstanding support for the Create the Future Design Contest and the many innovations it has inspired.”

— Kevin Hess, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Mouser Electronics

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2010 Category Winners

CONSUMER PRODUCTS CATEGORY

BreezeRite Air Filtration Module
Rob Luchsinger, Pipe Creek, Texas
BreezeRite eliminates the dust build up on the top and forward edge of fan blades and allows the ease of cleaning by simply pulling out the filter housing and rinsing it off - or replacing it with new filters, instead of trying to vacuum, dust or wash down each fan blade.

MACHINERY & EQUIPMENT CATEGORY

Lift Pump
Eric Foy, Central Point, Oregon
The current invention comprises an axial flow impeller pump section located at the inlet end of the transfer hose, a power head at the flex-fitting located near the destination (tank or truck), and a flexible drive shaft running inside the transfer hose.

MEDICAL CATEGORY

IDEA™ Enhanced Pulse Oximetry
Rodrigo Teixeira, Alton J. Reich, Stephen F. Malin, Huntsville, Alabama
IDEA™ is an elegant confluence of recent advances in probabilistic inference, unsupervised machine learning and quantitative medicine.

SAFETY AND SECURITY CATEGORY

Digital Window Distributed Imaging Camera
Ellen Cargill, Peter Jones, Dennis Purcell, Boston MA
Scallop Imaging's seven mexapixel Digital Window D7-180 video surveillance camera is the first stand-alone computational imaging system, able to stream and record in full-color high resolution throughout its 180° field of view, without fisheye distortion.

SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY CATEGORY

Sustainable, Durable Bridges of the Future
Ibrahim Al-Khattat, Talacre, Wales United Kingdom
The LPSA (light prestressed segmented arch) engineering system reduces bridge building to assembling a kit of compact parts that can easily be manufactured and transported, resulting in considerable cost, energy, and capital investment savings

TRANSPORTATION CATEGORY

Regenerative Braking Bike Front Wheel
David Swain, Frank Maurer, Jason Moore, Albert Shih, Pipe Creek, Texas
The goal of the system is to ultimately make it a retrofit front-wheel for any bicycle using hydraulic pump motors that exist today and are over 94% efficient.