Meet the 2026 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. 14 at 5 p.m. ET.

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2026 Undergraduate Finalists

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Shubham Bansal
Prisha Hemani
Deeya Sharma
Nikhita Vaddineni
Shubham Bansal, Prisha Hemani, Deeya Sharma, Nikhita Vaddineni
University of Washington
Adviser: Tristan Jafari
CPRight

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Each year, more than 350,000 Americans experience a heart attack outside a hospital, and about 90% of them die. Bystanders are often willing to help but are unable to deliver high-quality CPR. CPRight is a single-use, wallet-sized patch a rescuer places on a patient’s sternum. Displaying simple LED cues, it shows the rescuer, in real time, whether compression depths and rates are effective. CPRight does not require any additional technology or equipment, making it accessible and easy to use when seconds count to save lives.

Anuk Dias
Shaliny Jadhav
Dilshan Rajan
Anuk Dias, Shaliny Jadhav, Dilshan Rajan
University of Minnesota
Adviser: Gwenyth Fischer
Flow-IO

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Rapid intravenous (IV) access is essential in emergencies, and in pediatric patients, traditional IV access is often unsuccessful. Intraosseous (IO) needles provide a lifesaving alternative by delivering medications and fluids directly into the bone marrow space. Existing IO devices rely on clinicians’ judgment to select needle lengths and determine insertion depth, introducing substantial risks. Flow-IO is a universal pediatric IO needle architecture designed to replace traditional variable-length needle kits with a single, anatomy-driven device. This invention simplifies emergency medical inventory while eliminating clinician guesswork during high-stress situations.

Samanyu Dixit
Hieu Minh Doan
Sahaj Sapovadia
Chinmay Singh
Samanyu Dixit, Hieu Minh Doan, Sahaj Sapovadia, Chinmay Singh
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Adviser: Devin Hubbard
KAIRS (Knee Artificial Intelligence Rehabilitation Sleeve)

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After knee injuries and surgeries, patients follow months-long rehabilitation routines. The Knee Artificial Intelligence Rehabilitation Sleeve (KAIRS), a wearable rehab system, continuously monitors the range of knee motion and quality of movement during at-home exercises and everyday activities on the move. With a flexible, sensor-embedded sleeve, mobile app and cloud-based machine learning model, KAIRS delivers individualized progress tracking for patients and remote monitoring for clinicians. This invention could improve rehab adherence, support clinical decisions, enable personalized care plans and expand recovery guidance to patients with limited access to physical therapy.

Ankitha Challa
Andy Corliss
Komal Talloo
Nahom Zerai
Ankitha Challa, Andy Corliss, Komal Talloo, Nahom Zerai
Rice University
Adviser: Sabia Abidi
Lighted Oral Optics for Kids

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Millions of families seek care annually for illnesses that require doctors to examine the back of a child’s throat. The standard exam, using a tongue depressor and penlight, has remained largely unchanged in over a century. Team LOOK (Lighted Oral Optics for Kids) developed the Magic Wand, a child-centered system that combines a reusable handheld device, a disposable tongue-depressing attachment, and a secure digital platform for image capture and storage. Its wand-like design and interactive LEDs engage children while improving visualization, documentation and clinical efficiency.

Victoria Makalah King
Victoria Makalah King
Dartmouth College
Adviser: Kwame Owusu
Vaskular

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Venous thromboembolism (VTE) occurs when a blood clot in a deep vein, usually in a leg, travels to a lung and blocks an artery. VTE affects up to 900,000 Americans and causes up to 100,000 deaths annually. Vaskular is a wearable, battery-powered compression device that could prevent VTE through individualized therapy. Using synchronized ankle and knee photoplethysmography sensors to monitor blood flow and tissue oxygenation, it adjusts compression pressure, duration and sequencing in real time. Rechargeable and reusable, Vaskular could support patients both in hospital and at home.

2026 Graduate Finalists

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Rayan Bargouth
Asser El Ashwah
Rayan Bargouth, Asser El Ashwah
New York University
Adviser: Richard Stein
BioAxis

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Partial-thickness rotator cuff tears affect about 3 million Americans annually. Standard care includes rest, rehabilitation and pain management but does not repair structural damage. Many untreated tears progress to full-thickness rupture. Developed by Vitalis Regenerative Materials Inc., BioAxis is a single-use, point-of-care medical device that combines a patient’s platelet-rich plasma with a prefilled bioresorbable polymer to form a tissue-adherent hydrogel. This closed sterile system combines scaffold reconstitution, controlled platelet activation, and injectable hydrogel delivery to support tendon preservation and repair for patients who don’t meet the threshold for full surgical repair.

William McKay
Zachary Spears
Amogh Vellore
William McKay, Zachary Spears, Amogh Vellore
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Advisers: Anish Ghodadra, Matthew Spector
ClearView-Jaw

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Head and neck cancer patients often need mandibular reconstruction after jaw tumor removal, followed by high-dose radiation. The titanium plates used to secure the reconstructed jaw can distort radiation, shielding tumor cells and scattering the radiation into healing tissue, with about 60% of patients developing a complication within five years. The ClearView-Jaw device reduces harmful backscatter and shadowing while helping clinicians target tumors more precisely, lowering complications and improving patient outcomes.

Bryant Colin
Bryant Colin
University of Chicago
Adviser: Aaron Esser-Kahn
CoFATE

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Nine out of 10 drugs in clinical trials never reach patients. For immune drugs, that failure often begins with a test at the start. Existing tests use one cell type alone, measuring how strong a response is, but not what kind. CoFATE puts two immune cells in one tiny well, a dendritic cell that gives the instruction and a T cell that carries it out. It then reads which of five responses follows. Screening thousands of drugs this way could speed vaccines and treatments for autoimmune disease and cancer.

Bridget Clift
Cristina Ramirez-Vargas
Addison Whitehead
Bridget Clift, Cristina Ramirez-Vargas, Addison Whitehead
University of South Florida
Adviser: Nathan Schilaty
NeuTrode

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Electroencephalography (EEG) helps diagnose and monitor neurological conditions such as epilepsy, sleep disorders and brain injuries. Current EEG technologies consist of wet, semi-dry and dry electrodes, but each presents significant limitations. Providing an innovative alternative, NeuTrode is a flexible EEG electrode designed to maintain consistent scalp contact without the use of gels or liquids. Its soft, comfortable design adapts to different hair densities, skin conditions and head shapes, and it enables faster setup, improved patient comfort and steady, reliable signal acquisition.

Nathan Day-Holterhoff
Maxwell Mamishev
Rishi Sappidi
Maxwell Stafford
Nathan Day-Holterhoff, Maxwell Mamishev, Rishi Sappidi, Maxwell Stafford
University of Washington
Adviser: Sep Makhsous
SpectraSense

Pesticides play an essential role in modern agriculture by protecting crops from insects, weeds and disease, but their widespread use has raised concerns about chemical residues entering the food supply. Combining fluorescence-based monitoring with embedded chemometric analysis in a compact, portable package, SpectraSense is designed to rapidly detect and classify pesticide residues at the point of inspection. By bringing advanced chemical analysis closer to where agricultural decisions are made, SpectraSense could improve the speed, accessibility and efficiency of pesticide monitoring across the food supply chain.