Grant Kightlinger and Molly Grace, co-creators of the “FairPlay Challenge.” This innovative education curriculum uses an escape room model to engage students in important life lessons. Many of us have had that experience in school of feeling trapped in a boring lesson about a topic that didn’t seem to have any relevance to our lives.…
Shawn Springs, CEO of Windpact. This former athlete turned entrepreneur and inventor is creating new sports technology to improve player safety. Who can be an inventor? A dynamic new exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation is posing that question through a unique lens, andMore
Siblings Steven (left) and Zora Chung (right) co-founded technology company ReJoule. This sustainable startup is building a circular economy for EV batteries from the ground up How do you make a critically important sustainable industry even more sustainable? For electric vehicles, one of the challenges is the sustainable source itself — the lithium-ion battery. Although…
How two high school inventors created a flashlight to help light the way for their community’s first responders
This student inventor uses an innovative renewable energy source to help monitor natural disasters.
An award-winning student inventor, Tarun Batchu has discovered an eco-friendly way to convert plastics into fuel.
Through Oregon MESA, engineer Thien Nguyen discovered his facility for numbers and a supportive community. Thien Nguyen was born in Vietnam and lived there until fourth grade, when his family immigrated to the United States. At the time Thien spoke no English, yet as he adjusted to his new surroundings in Portland, Oregon, he quickly…
University of Iowa sophomore Dasia Taylor has created low-cost, infection-sensing stitches. Inventor Dasia Taylor is one of those people who seems destined to change the world. At just 14 years old, she was consulting at Harvard on the topic of equity. Now 19, Dasia is in the process of patenting her first medical device —…
Personal experience drove Jessie Garcia to create her novel head impact indicator. Identify a problem, then work to solve it. That’s the basic formula for invention, and that’s exactly how Jessie Garcia came to create the Tozuda Head Impact Indicator, a tiny tool that attaches to a helmet and signals to its wearer when a…
Biomechanical engineer Ratul Narain’s monitoring devices help detect hypothermia and other illnesses in underweight newborns. Every year, 20 million clinically underweight babies are born worldwide. Of these, eight million are born in India, where many parents don’t have easy access to neonatal care resources. Yet low birth weight — generally defined as less than five…
A pioneer in the field of green chemistry, John Warner talks about the successes and challenges in creating sustainable change. John Warner is, to put it mildly, passionate about his work. He is a prolific inventor holding more than 300 patents, as well as an educator and entrepreneur. He is most passionate when talking about…
Maria Artunduaga is the CEO and founder of Samay, a successful startup aimed at providing low-cost, at-home diagnostics for dangerous respiratory conditions. At age 34, Maria Artunduaga took a leap of faith. Ambitious and focused, she was studying plastic surgery — a highly competitive specialty — at University of Chicago Medicine, on track to become…