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 moreA ‘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 nowThank 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
contest
Contest
I have a patent application on invention "flying vehicle," declined on end stage. Ukrpatent said that Ukraine cannot create this project.
Atmospheric pressure 100 kPa. This is mean than in 1 square meter action force 10000 kilogram (kgs). I made experiment.
The patented D-cycle (differential-stroke cycle) is a 2-/4-cycle hybrid,
When left alone on a rooftop, flower pots frequently break. Large flower pots may suffer significant trauma if they are moved negligently during home renovation. If a cracked flower pot breaks into a few pieces, it is no longer useful. However, if it has a little crack,
2025 Entries
>> All
>> Aerospace & Defense
>> Automotive/Transportation
>> Medical
>> Electronics
>> Energy, Power & Propulsion
>> Manufacturing & Materials
>> Robotics & Automation
2025 Participants
>> Entrants
2025 Results
To be announced
{ctf_votes:2025}
{ctf_profile:list:2025}
Malath Arar
Staff Engineer
Dean Barker
Director
Nate Bernklau
Sr. Research Technologist & Consultant
Mantosh Bhattacharya
Director – Machinery Integrity
Sabin Carpiuc
Principal Physical Modeling Engineer
Miguel Castillo
VP Technology Development
Federico Cindolo
Director of Research
Paul Cottey
Founder and CEO
Jeff Crompton
Chief Technology Officer
Fernando Da Mota Lopes Junior
Mechanical Engineer
Johannes Dapprich
CEO
Francesco Ferretti
Product Design Engineer
Jon Fifield
Chief Engineer
Mitch Finne
Engineering Director
Inmaculada Gálvez
Supply Chain Quality Manager
Lyle Jalbert
Senior Systems Engineer
Farhan Jangda
Product Manager
Tomasz Kawala
Technical Specialist, Electronics Design
Andreas Klemm
Compliance Program Manager
Thomas Klena
Hardware Excellence Manager
Ozgur Kocaturk
VP of MRI Guided Therapies
Bharath Konda
Product Marketing Manager
Govindarajan Kothandaraman
Senior Tech Advisor
Patrick Krueger
Senior Manager, Manufacturing Engineering
Grant Kruger
Founder & CEO
Richard Langkamp
Manager of New Product Development (Retired)
Jose Mercado
Director of Design
Scott Moore
Chief Engineer
Kevin Moore
Sr. Principal Engineer
Arunachalam Nagarajan
Engineering Senior Manager
Paul Nussbaum
Professor
Stephen Osborne
Director of Engineering
Anilkumar Pandit
Senior Consulting Engineer
Jay Paster
Electronics Engineer
Marek Piechocinski
MEMS Design Engineer
Antonio Quintieri
Principal Engineer
Fayaz Rasheed
Senior Mechanical System & Design Analysis Engineer
Berger Richard
Thermal SIE - Full Size Truck
Marc Rosenmayr
Advisor
Gary Sera
Director Emiritus
Susan Stanton
Partner
Mike Stokes
Principal Design Engineer
Samson Stoll
Systems Engineer
John Trevino
Lead Staff Engineer
Torbjorn Virdung
Technical Leader, CFD
William Wells
Controls Systems Engineer
Puck Yan
Principal Professional Staff
Jun Zhang
Hardware Systems Design Engineer
The following entries received the highest overall scores from the panel of judges.
They are listed in alphabetical order by title.
A Major Breakthrough in Global Climate Goals
A Morphing Quadrotor-Blimp with Balloon Failure Resilience for Mobile Ecological Sensing
A New Way To Stay In Space : Self Neutralizing Air Breathing Plasma Thruster
A Practical Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) Rocket
A Smart Contact Lens for Glaucoma Management
Aeroplicity - CMMC Compliant/Zero Trust Browser
Affordable Satellite IoT Network
Air Quality Booster with No Hardware
Anti-Gyroscopic Effect Wheel: A Patented Innovation for Motorcycles and Vehicles
Bioinspired Soft Robotic Jellyfish: Innovations in Marine Monitoring and STEM Education
Boundary Layer Ingesting (BLI) Ducted Fan for Silent Flight
Champion-Level Drone Racing Using Deep Reinforcement Learning
Continuous Low-Dose Delivery of Lenalidomide
Controlled Environment Transport Containers
Cosmetic Silica Upcycled From Rice Husk as Natural Alternative to Microplastic Powders
Cost-effective High-performance Sustainable Lightweight Automotive Body Structures
Daltonomous - Cyber-Physical Defence for Autonomous Systems
Development of an Innovative Medical Imaging Platform
Direct Print Defrosters and Heaters
Dynamically Tunable RF Filters
EndoSurge: Radiation-free Intervention
Enhanced Noninvasive Liver Fibrosis Assessment with a Novel Shear Wave Focusing Device
Fingerprint Door Lock System using Arduino and Smartphone
High Power Density Electric Power and Propulsion
High-Density, Soft Bioelectronic Fibers for Minimally Invasive Sensing and Stimulation
Highly Maneuverble Drone for Urban Search and Rescue Operations
Hybrid Multi-legged Reconfigurable Robot for Search and Rescue Operations
Intra-Nasal Intracranial Pressure Monitor
Jitsik MetaDrive XR - Mixed Reality Driving Simulation
Lab-on-a-Chip Genetic Test Device Identifies Viruses Within Three Minutes
Laser-generated Anti-icing and Anti-fogging Transparent Materials
Leakproof Valve to Protect the Environment and Enable Hydrogen Fuels
LiqFric - The Future of Friction - Time for a Model Change
MAD3: Software Toolkit for Robust Predictions of Plastic Anisotropy in Metals
Magnetic Flow Batteries for Mega Watts of Renewable Long Duration Energy Storage
Marine Debris Collecting Underwater Robot
Miniaturized Portable Emissions Measurement System (mini-PEMS)
Minimally Invasive Tissue Sealing (MITS) Patch
Modern, Fast, Accurate EM Simulation Software for Antenna and Radar Design
Multi-Modal Traffic Detection System
Nano Sensor-based Real-time Detection of Sodium Hypochlorite for Enhanced Water Quality Control
NETrolyze: A Novel Immunotherapy for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
Non-Contact Cardiopulmonary Monitor
One Part Epoxy Changes from Red to Clear Under UV Light
Opacifying Acrylic Polymer Technology to Enable Road Markings with Reduced Titanium Dioxide Content
Optimizing Lithium-Ion Batteries for eVTOL Applications
Personalized Pharmaceuticals with CRISPR and AI
Precision Braille Printer with Threaded Motion Control
RDB55 - Rim-driven Brushless Thruster for Underwater Applications
Real-Time Non-Surfactant Emulsion Fuel Supply System
Revolutionizing Gene Therapy Delivery with Polymeric Nanoparticles (PNPs) and the HIT SCAN™ Platform
RHOBARR(TM) Barrier Dispersions Platform
Robotic Inspection of Distillation Column Trays
Robotic Puller to Enhance Safety and Sustainability in Energy Transmission
ROSES - RObotic System for Endovascular Systems
SAWSense: Using Surface Acoustic Waves for Surface-bound Event Recognition
Self-Compensated Active Filters
Semiconductor Factory in a Box
Smart Water Quality Monitoring System
SolarSCAPE Enables Building Giant Parabolic Solar Collectors on Desert Sand with Low CAPEX
Stavatti SM-920 Commercial Airliner
Surgify Halo: A New Innovative Technology for Safer, Effective, and More Precise Bone Cutting
Thin-film Thermoelectric Cooling Device
Three-dimensional Printing of Natural Wood
Turbo Wing - TW Propulsion for a New Class of Vertical Take-Off and Landing Aircraft
Ultralow-power Standoff Acoustic Leak Detection
WaterStrider: A New 56-mg Controllable Microswimmer Driven by a New 1-mg Unimorph SMA-Based Actuator
Wearable, Non-invasive, Continuous Blood Pressure Monitors for Maternal Health
GRAND PRIZE
NETrolyze: A Novel Immunotherapy for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
Sam Currier and Priyan Weerrappuli, Extrinsic Immunity, West Bloomfield, MI, USA
AEROSPACE & DEFENSE CATEGORY
Laser-generated Anti-icing and Anti-fogging Transparent Materials
Chi Vinh Ngo and Chunlei Guo, AlchLight LLC, Rochester, NY, USA
Honorable Mention – Aerospace & Defense Category
Daltonomous – Cyber-physical Defense for Autonomous Systems
Alex Dalton, Pritam Dash and Prasanna Karthik, Daltonomous Inc., Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Boundary Layer Ingesting (BLI) Ducted Fan for Silent Flight
Feroz Ahmed, Ismaeel Zaman, Djamel Rezgui, and Mahdi Azarpeyvand, University of Bristol, Bristol, England
Safe2Ditch Technology
Jesse Midgett, Louis Glaab and Patricia Glaab, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, USA
STARS - A Deployable CubeSat Telescope Superstructure for Near Earth Asteroid Detection and Planetary Defense
Athip Thirupathi Raj, Adrien Bouskela, and Jekan Thangavelautham, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
AUTOMOTIVE/TRANSPORTATION CATEGORY
Multi-modal Traffic Detection System
Tyson Thomas and Aditya Kurupati, Transensys LLC, San Francisco, CA, USA
Honorable Mention – Automotive/Transportation Category
RDB55 Rim-driven Brushless Thruster for Underwater Applications
Mohamed Keshk, M-T-K, Cairo, Egypt
LiqFric – the Future of Friction – Time for a Model Change
Roman Milczarek, Niels Wittigniels, and Ute Wittig, LF GmbH & Co. KG, Leverkusen, Kazakhstan
Cost-effective High-performance Sustainable Lightweight Automotive Body Structures
Lewis Motion, WEAV3D Inc., Norcross, GA, USA
Real-time Non-surfactant Emulsion Fuel Supply System
Yahya Wira Jazair, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
ELECTRONICS CATEGORY
Thin-film Thermoelectric Cooling Device
Rama Venkatasubramanian, Luke Osborn, Jeff Maranchi, Meiyong Himmtann, Jonathan Pierce, Richard Ung, Katy Carneal, Robert Armiger, and Katie Kerrigan, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, Laurel, MD, USA
Honorable Mention – Electronics Category
Semiconductor Factory in a Box
Ahmed Busnaina and Sudhir Jain, Nano OPS Inc., Burlington, MA, USA
Ultra-low Power Standoff Acoustic Leak Detection
Michael Hasselbeck, MicroPhonon, High Springs, FL, USA
The Safeguard Cane
Leong Kah Meng, Chan Bun Seng,Kang Eng Siew, Ngeu Chee Hau, and Ng Khai Le, Southern University College, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
Dynamically Tunable RF Filters
Sam Belkin, CarboMed, San Diego, CA, USA
MANUFACTURING & MATERIALS CATEGORY
RHOBARR Barrier Dispersions Platform
Allyson Marianelli, Dow Inc., Collegeville, PA, USA
Honorable Mention – Manufacturing & Materials Category
MAD3: Software Toolkit for Robust Predictions of Plastic Anisotrophy in Metals
David Montes de Oca Zapiain and Hojun Lim, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA
A Major Breakthrough in Global Climate Goals
Jan Thoren, Xiomara Garcia, and Ron Suverkrop, NanoArchitech Inc., Gilroy, CA, USA
Controlled Polymer Ablation Powered by Vulcan: A Novel Pre-treatment Process for Adhesive Joining of Lightweight FRP Assemblies with a Quality Control System
Abhilasha Tomar, Plasma Bound, Dublin, Ireland
ACRYSOL RM735-BF: A Biocide-free and Solvent-Free Associative Rheology Modifier for the Waterborne Architectural Coatings Industry
John Rabasco, Sipei Zhang, Wenqin (Sunny) Wang, Jessica Kathy Seidman, Erica Frankel, Tara Conley, Edwin Baraniak, David Heinley, Gerry Valdez, and Kuldip Patel, Dow Inc., Collegeville, PA, USA
MEDICAL CATEGORY
A Smart Contact Lens for Glaucoma Management
Hamdi Torun, Arda Deniz Yalcinkaya, Gunhan Dundar, and Ozgur Kaya, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
Honorable Mention – Medical Category
Vivally
Beth Labreche and Jill Schiaparelli, Avation Medical, St. Paul, MN, USA
Wearable, Non-invasive, Continuous Blood Pressure Monitors for Maternal Health
Xina Quan, Zhenan Bao, Keith Drake, Doug Halperin, Junjun Liu, Art Muir, Peter Noymer, Dave Richardson, Thomas Roxlo, and Will Sutherland, PyrAmes Inc., Cupertino, CA, USA
Minimally Invasive Tissue Sealing (MITS) Patch
Sarah Wu, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
Revolutionizing Gene Therapy Delivery with Polymeric Nanoparticles (PNPs) and the HIT SCAN™ Platform
Krista Smith, Andrea McCue, Tony Duong, Allison Secard, Katie Lianez, Gabe Meister, Emma Coughlin, and Russell Kittel, Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, OH, USA
ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION CATEGORY
Astroant: A Miniature Symbiotic Robot Serving on the Outside Surfaces of Spacecraft, Rovers, and Landers for Inspection and Diagnostic Tasks
Fangzheng Liu, Nathan Perry, Tobias Roeddiger, Sean Auffinger, Joseph Paradiso, and Ariel Ekblaw, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, USA
Honorable Mention – Robotics & Automation Category
Robotic Puller to Enhance Safety and Sustainability in Energy Transmission
Clyde Webster and Rohan Patel, Crest Robotics, Concord, Australia
Hybrid Multi-legged Reconfigurable Robot for Search and Rescue Operations
Alex Ramirez Serrano, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada
Biorobotics
Erik Engeberg, Maohua Lin, and Santiago Guerra, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA
WaterStrider: A New 56-mg Controllable Microswimmer Driven by a New 1-mg Unimorph SMA-Based Actuator
Conor Trygstad, Washington State University, Maple Valley, WA, USA
SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY CATEGORY
Cosmetic Silica Upcycled from Rice Husk as a Natural Alternative to Microplastic Powders
Anne-Marie Vincent, Jean-Luc Garaud, Giada Tonet, and Cedric Toh, Dow Silicones Belgium SRL, Seneffe, Belgium
Honorable Mention – Sustainable Technology Category
Plastalyst
Robert Kunzmann and Tadashi Kubo, AC Biode, Hesperange, Luxembourg
Three-Dimensional Printing of Natural Wood
Md Shajedul Hoque Thakur, Muhammad M. Rahman, and Chen Shi, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA
Electrolyzers that Live Outside and Underwater: A Path to Safe, Resilient, Gigawatt-scale Clean Hydrogen Production
Elias Greenbaum, GTA Inc., Dunwoody, GA, USA
Enhancing Wheat Seed Membranes via Low-Pressure-Vacuum Plasma Treatment for Salinity-Resilient Strategic Crop Cultivation
Abdel Fattah Elgendy, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
TOP TEN MOST POPULAR ENTRIES
Contemporary Dum Biryani Cooker
Manaswini K, Krethika K, and Saatvik K, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Puducherry, India
Intelligent Wheel Safety System: AI-Enhanced Tire Safety and Sustainability with Wheel Airbag Technology
Abdulkadir Baba Hassan, University of Abuja, Abuja, Nigeria
Portable Assisted Breathing System Schilling-Pack J-1
Jonar Cubillan, 3JC Technologies, Maracaibo, Venezuela
Biorobotics
Erik Engeberg, Maohua Lin, and Santiago Guerra, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA
Smart Canvas to Design an Optimum New Product Through Regenerative Process
Viswanath Nemani, Accenture, Sunnyvale, CA, USA
Digital Twin of 3D Printer
Pratik Mane and Yash Pawar, Sanjivani College of Engineering, Shrirampur, India
Crono: Digital Time-switch to Drive Automation
Harshal Lunawat, Sujit Sonawane, and Rushikesh Kulkarni, General Industrial Controls, Pune, India
"Rakshak" - An IoT Wearable Wild Animal Distraction Device
Kiran Wakchaure, Saksham Kulkarni, Sai Lokhande, Raj Gavhale, and Sai Bankar, Sanjivani University, Kopargaon, India
Biosensors Assisted Urban Waste Water Treatment Plan with Improved Efficiency
Muthushree R, Aakash M, and Gaayathri RC, Bannari Amman Insitute of Technology, Erode, India
Watch Tower: 360° Ground-to-Air Detection System
Yetkin Degirmenci, Montgomery, TX, USA
Astronauts in weightlessness, inside of a large pressurized habitat, can be self-propelled through the cabin air WITHOUT pushing off against any object. A slipper-like variant of swimfins displaces cabin air to push them forward on their own power (CTF 2023 Holmin).
Prototype has flexible plastic core sheet adhered to rubber soles of strap sandle foot-holders,
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