The 2025 Contest is Now Open for Entries!

Submit your best new product ideas in any of seven categories for a chance at $25,000 USD and other great prizes. Here’s how 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 All the 2024 Winning Inventions

Special Report spotlights the eight amazing winners in 2024 as well as honorable mentions in each category, plus the top ten most popular entries as voted by our community.

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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James Powell

Engineer
Solar Turbines
San Diego, CA

BS and MS Mechanical engineering San Diego State University
Professor for Mechanical Engineering SDSU, UCLA, USD
Math Prfessor SDSU, Santa Monica Cit College

Masters thesis in Biomechanical Engineering.
Currently a Industrial Gas Turbine Design Engineer, Solar Turbines Caterpillar

Past Chair ASME for San Diego 2008 and 2009
Member of ASM for San Diego

Specialize in Fatigue analysis methods and non-linear mechanics. Examples
are creep, crack growth, hyperelasticity. Also teach finite element courses
for ASME, UCLA and SDSU.

Work in material property database systems for high temperature alloys.
Work in computational analysis and modeling for mechanical design.

Judge the Greater Science and Engineering Fair for San Diego for the
past 12 years.