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.

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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2012 Category Winners

GRAND PRIZE WINNER

Sensordrone: a Practical, Tricorder Like Platform for Consumers and Mobile Device Developers
Mark Wagner, Sensorcon, Buffalo, New York
Sensordrone is a multi-purpose, configurable sensor that dramatically extends the sensing capability of smartphones & tablets. It is a key Fob sized platform for both consumers and developers.

CONSUMER PRODUCTS CATEGORY

LumEN: Luminescent Solar Concentrators for Sustainable On-Demand Electricity Production
Gianmarco Griffini, Massimo Micocci, and Francesca Ostuzzi, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
Lum-EN is the first portable device able to harvest solar energy and deliver electrical energy on-demand employing organic luminescent solar concentrators (OLSCs).

MEDICAL CATEGORY

Prosthetic Leg Connector
Dave King, Kelowna, BC, Canada
This is a device to aid those who wear prosthetic limbs. The current state of the art is a multilayer system that consists of a cotton sock and a silicone rubber sock that fits over the limb. The prosthesis can attach to the silicone sock by means of a rod and ratchet device.

ELECTRONICS CATEGORY

Cloud and Smartphone Accelerator
James Awrach, Beverly, Massachusetts
Grid-X is a SeaFire innovation that addresses BWDP, and enables faster local and globally distributed supercomputing at lower power and cost.

MACHINERY/EQUIPMENT CATEGORY

Thermal Stir Weld Process
Jeff Ding, NASA, Athens, Alabama
The thermal stir welding process (U.S. Patents 7,980,449 & 8,127,977) is a new solid-state (meaning the weld metal does not melt during welding) welding process invented at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

SAFETY & SECURITY CATEGORY

LIFE PACK – Hypothermia Prevention Floatation Device
Dwight and Jane Cushman, Portland, Oregon
The LIFE PACK is the first of its kind dual bag floatation device incorporating an inner thermal lined compartment, which holds a heat generating super-corrosion technology sleeve.

SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY CATEGORY

Aquaback Water Purification System
E. Andrew Condon, William Zebuhr, Scott Newquist, David Dussault, Steven Sahagian, Nicholas Wong, Michael Easton, William Burie, Charles Blanchard, and Nicole Sandoval, Aquaback Technologies, Tewksbury, Massachusetts
Aquaback is developing a highly efficient, low cost, low maintenance, compact, modular vapor compression distiller to be the water processing module in a wide variety of water processing systems to clean incoming water or reclaim waste water.

TRANSPORTATION CATEGORY

Re-Thinking Automotive TPMS
Ivan Batinic, San Martin, California
This is a new approach to implementing vehicular Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) which is more economical and ecological than existing systems mass-deployed in the market to date, with significant advantages, the foremost being the passive non-electronic sending unit (inside the tire) thereby eliminating RF electronics, thermal compensation issues, raising of the RF noise-floor and wasteful consumption of limited Lithium resources for batteries.