Congratulations to Our 2024 Grand Prize and First Place Winners!

NETrolyze, a novel immunotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), was named the $25,000 grand prize winner at a live finalist round held November 15 in New York. The first-in-class therapeutic injectable gel prevents the spread of TNBC, one of the most aggressive cancer types, enabling patients to avoid toxic chemotherapy and expensive treatments – potentially transforming their lives. Click here for the full list of 2024 winners. Also see the Top 100 highest scoring entries.

Special thanks to our esteemed panel of judges.

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.

Listen now

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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2013 Winners

GRAND PRIZE

ChemoPatch
Alydaar Rangwala, Nikhil Mehandru, Aaron Perez and Brandon Sim
Theratech, Loudonville, NY

Category Winners

AEROSPACE & DEFENSE CATEGORY

Winner:

Microwave Extraction of Water for Space Propellant
Edwin Ethridge
Huntsville, AL

Honorable Mentions:

Sensitive, High Resolution Thermal Infrared Imagers Based on Visible Digital Cameras
Marcos Kleinerman
MetriLight, Inc., Amherst, MA

Prillings for Next Generation Rocket Fuel
Joy Mann Simmons, Joseph Resnick, Ron Stewart and Holden Lane
Perry, GA

CONSUMER PRODUCTS CATEGORY

Winner:

Plant Air Purifier
James Schaeffer, Bill Wolverton, Wayne Schaeffer and Bernarr Schaeffer
U.S. Health Equipment Co., Kingston, NY

Honorable Mentions:

Isowalk Intelligent Mobility
Ron Goldberg
Greenwood Lake, NY

Air Filter Maintenance Alert
John Pollock
Peoria, AZ

ELECTRONICS CATEGORY

Winner:

iPecs Pro Clinical Prosthetic Alignment and Assessment Tool
Michael Leydet, Richard Harrington, Alan Hutchenreuther, Vinay Bharadwaj, Chuck Krapf, Michael Link, Megan Toscas, Steven Hoover, Chris Nowak, Aaron Taszreak, Douglas Briggs, and Frank Fedel
College Park Industries, Fraser, MI

Honorable Mentions:

BluDAQ: Android Bluetooth Oscilloscope
Aubrey Kagan
Emphatec, Inc., Ontario, Canada

Simple, Rapid Method of Water Quality Control
Volodymyr Maslov and Gleb Dorozinsky
ISP NASU, Kiev, Ukraine

MACHINERY & EQUIPMENT CATEGORY

Winner:

Fuel Flexible, Ultra-Portable Microturbine Generator
Erik Herold, Jason Ethier and Ivan Wang
Dynamo Micropower, Boston, MA

Honorable Mentions:

Smartagger
Charles Kochou
Zareen P/L, Sydney, Australia

Audio Imager
Graeme MacDonald
Cube Industrial Design, Watsons Bay, NSW, Australia

MEDICAL CATEGORY

Winner:

Vitalflo
James Dieffenderfer, Mike Brown and Leigh Johnson
North Carolina State University, Apex, NC

Honorable Mentions:

OrthoSensor Verasense System
Carlos Gil
Orthosensor, Inc., Sunrise, FL

Exo Dynamics — ExMS
Jorge Sanz Guerrero, Dan Johnson, Sam Beckett, Alejandro Catalan and James Buquet
Exo Dynamics, Ann Arbor, MI

SAFETY & SECURITY CATEGORY

Winner:

Power Fingerprinting Monitor: Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Cyber Attack
Carlos Aguayo Gonzalez, Jeffrey Reed and Steven Chen
Power Fingerprinting, Inc., Blacksburg, VA

Honorable Mentions:

Line-Wise" Snap-On Identifier
Alan Sherman and Neil Koenig
Intelplex, Olivette, MO

Electronic Aerial Emergency Flare
Harry Wainwright
HLeeWainwright Tech Consulting, Bethlehem, PA

SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGIES CATEGORY

Winner:

The Paradigm Shift in Wind Turbine Technology
Glen Lux
Lux Wind Power Ltd., Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Honorable Mentions:

Solar Textile: Ultra-Light, Low-Cost, Flexible, and High-Efficiency Solar Energy Harvesters
Ramki Kalyanaraman
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN

Energy Cell with Multilayer Capacitors
Denny Wheeler
Crystalline Energy Research Co., Nampa, ID

TRANSPORTATION & AUTOMOTIVE CATEGORY

Winner:

Swift Tram: High Speed Automated People Mover
Carl Lawrence, Becky English, Graham Hill, John Murino, Elaine Thorndike, Gaby Aweida, Carl Talkington, Rob Kammerling, Kim Hedberg, Nancy Balch, Ilse Gayl and Ron Gremban
Swift Tram, Inc., Boulder, CO

Honorable Mentions:

Making Night Time Driving Safe and Automated
Ofer David, Yoav Grauer, and Eyal Levi
BrightWay Vision, Haifa, Israel

Fuel Quality Sensor
Alain Lunati, Eric Hermitte, Sylvain Oberti, Xavier Capron, Tual Trainini, Christelle Kernaflen, Owsin Galtier and Thierry Gergaud
SP3H, PACA, France

BEST STUDENT ENTRY

Winner:

Vehicle With Autonomous Operation — UMech Robocar
Stanislav Kuskov, Kirill Kondratev, Pavel Karpenko, Maxim Shestak, and Ilya Shebanov
UMech University, Moscow, Russia

Click here for the list of the TOP TEN MOST POPULAR ENTRIES

Click here for the TOP 100 highest scoring entries.

A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR JUDGES