Meet the 2025 Collegiate Inventors Competition Finalists

As you learn more about these 10 Finalist teams, you can cast your vote for the People’s Choice Award, a special award that rewards the winning team with $2,000 and patent acceleration. Vote once per day now through Oct. 15 at 5 p.m. ET.

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2025 Undergraduate Finalists

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Morgan Coghlan
Ronith Dasari
Morgan Coghlan, Ronith Dasari
Purdue University
Adviser: Asem Aboelzahab
Augmented Laparoscopic Grasper (ALG)

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Laparoscopy is a minimally invasive surgical technique that results in less pain, faster recovery and smaller scars. Consequently, for many conditions, it is now more widely used than open surgery. However, while graspers are fundamental tools in laparoscopic procedures, they present challenges including ergonomic issues and reduced tactile feedback. ALG includes a compact force sensor in the tip of the graspers that provides real-time force sensing capabilities. With immediate visual feedback on the force applied to tissue, ALG helps surgeons maintain better control and avoid tissue damage.

Daniel John
Daniel John
Calvin University
Adviser: Jon VerLee
BiliRoo

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Globally, 60% of full-term infants and 80% of premature infants develop jaundice, one of the leading causes of preventable infant disability and mortality worldwide. Over 6 million infants lack access to the necessary phototherapy treatment due to sporadic electricity and high equipment costs. BiliRoo is a patent-pending, easy-to-use, low-cost, non-electric medical device designed to treat infant jaundice in limited-resource settings. BiliRoo is a wearable infant sling that combines filtered sunlight phototherapy and kangaroo care (skin-to-skin contact) to enable parental involvement and potential at-home use.

Madhav Aggarwal
Tanvi Gadamsetti
Madhav Aggarwal, Tanvi Gadamsetti
Michigan State University
Adviser: Paul Jaques
BRCĒ Composite Material

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Equipment and apparel across industries often fail due to lack of advanced materials technology, affecting those who depend on them. To provide greater strength, durability and flexibility, BRCĒ (pronounced "brace") has developed patented high-performance polymer-composite materials that combine an interlocking design with directional friction at the fiber level, giving extreme tensile strength, variable elasticity and fire resistance. In BRCĒ's flagship product, “Shoelaces That NEVER QUIT,” for example, the knot stays secure with directionally responsive friction, providing sport-specific benefits and lateral support at all national major leagues across sports.

Nicolas Chicoine
Cameron Freeman
Myles (Max) Miller
Nicolas Chicoine, Cameron Freeman, Myles (Max) Miller
Washington University, St. Louis
Adviser: Barani Raman
Sense

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Food allergies are common and dangerous. In the U.S., someone comes into an emergency room every six minutes with food-based anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction. Designed to help people avoid exposure to allergens that could endanger them, the Selective Electronic peaNut Sensing Entity (Sense) is a portable device that detects latent peanut presence in foods. In under one minute, by hovering the device over food, Sense scans a whole dish for peanut presence and displays results on a smartphone application. It has achieved very high accuracy during testing.

Cameron Erber
Yeonju Kim
Sophianne Loh
Luke Yuen
Cameron Erber, Yeonju Kim, Sophianne Loh, Luke Yuen
Rice University
Adviser: Sabia Abidi
VacuTrac

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Each year, more than 300,000 Americans undergo spinal fusion surgery, in which bone grafts or metal implants are used to permanently connect two or more vertebrae. However, this surgery involves exposing the spine in a long, risky and inefficient process. To address this, VacuTrac combines the functions of multiple surgical tools in a single, user-friendly device. It allows two surgeons to work on both sides of the spine at once, reducing the time needed to expose the spine while increasing efficiency and precision.

2025 Graduate Finalists

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Weixin Guan
Yaxuan Zhao
Weixin Guan, Yaxuan Zhao
University of Texas at Austin
Adviser: Guihua Yu
AirGel

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As many as two-thirds of people worldwide are experiencing water scarcity. As the population grows and freshwater supplies decrease, sustainable ways to increase the planet’s water supply will become more crucial. AirGel introduces an innovative, cost-effective way to extract drinking water from humidity in the air anytime, anywhere. This gel-based, solar atmospheric water harvesting device combines hydrogel sorbents derived from biomass sources, such as food scraps and forestry byproducts, with a portable collection device that requires minimal power, delivering off-grid access while reducing reliance on energy-intensive and centralized infrastructure.

Peter Bertone
Levi Olevsky
Peter Bertone, Levi Olevsky
Dartmouth College
Adviser: Katherine Hixon
GyroGel

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GyroGel is a biomaterial implant to improve jawbone reconstruction. Each year, tens of thousands of head and neck cancer patients lose part of their jaw to tumor removal, and face difficult operations that require multiple surgical teams, painful bone grafting from their legs, and limited restoration of facial appearance. GyroGel provides a patient-specific implant that combines 3D-printed bio-ceramics with a cell-friendly gel that encourages natural bone regrowth. By simplifying surgery and enabling the jaw to rebuild itself, GyroGel can reduce clinical burden, improve quality of life, and transform care.

Jacob Belding
Ava Forystek
Jacob Belding, Ava Forystek
Cornell University
Advisers: Abraham Stroock, Margaret Frank, Neil Mattson
RedAlert Living Sensors

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Nitrogen plays a critical role in crop plant production, promoting rapid growth and increasing crop yields. Current techniques for evaluating nitrogen availability primarily involve measuring chlorophyll in the foliage but can fail to provide precise and timely information. To easily indicate nitrogen deficiency, RedAlert Living Sensor plants are genetically modified to produce a plant pigment in a vivid red color. By helping farmers quickly recognize deficiencies and apply nitrogen fertilizer only as needed, this invention facilitates plant-human interaction to reduce chemical waste, benefitting agriculture and the environment.

Sanghyun Park
Sanghyun Park
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Adviser: Giovanni Traverso
SLIM

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Patient medication adherence remains challenging due to complex dosing schedules and lifestyle barriers. Existing long-acting injectable medications often require large needles and clinical administration, limiting patient comfort and access. Self-Aggregating Long-Acting Injectable Microcrystals (SLIM) represent a breakthrough drug delivery platform where microcrystals self-organize into compact implants after injection through small needles. This biocompatible system enables self-administration with minimal discomfort while extending drug release duration. SLIM technology could improve patient autonomy and treatment adherence across various therapeutic areas by making long-acting injections more accessible and user-friendly.

Amanda Hudson
Jade Lee
Alexandra McLennan
Ishika Mukherjee
Amanda Hudson, Jade Lee, Alexandra McLennan, Ishika Mukherjee
Rice University
Adviser: Justin Bird
The Dual-Sided Tag Applier (DSTA)

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Soft tissue sarcomas (STS) are aggressive and anatomically complex cancers that can occur anywhere in the body. Surgical removal is the primary treatment; unfortunately, STS has a high recurrence rate of 50%. Current tumor margin-marking methods are inconsistent, imprecise and nonstandardized, increasing miscommunication between pathology and oncology teams and compromising histopathological evaluation. The DSTA is a medical device that simultaneously labels the tumor and marks the tumor bed during surgery, accurately marking tumor margins at the point of resection and enabling more targeted recurrence management to improve patient outcomes.