2026 Collegiate Inventors Competition Finalists Showcase Future of American Innovation

NORTH CANTON, Ohio, Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The Collegiate Inventors Competition^®, an annual competition that has rewarded innovations, discoveries and research by college and university students and their faculty advisers for more than 35 years, announced today its 2026 finalists.

This year's finalists and their inventions provide a glimpse into the future of American innovation and emerging technological trends — from emergency resuscitation to rapid pesticide monitoring. Through their research, these students have harnessed their "inner inventor" to make working prototypes that can positively change our world.

Each year, individuals representing a broad cross-section of technological fields serve as first-round judges, evaluating entries based on originality of the idea, process, level of student initiative, and potential value and usefulness to society. The finalists will present their inventions in the Washington, D.C., area on Oct. 15 to a panel of final-round judges composed of the most influential inventors and invention experts in the nation — National Inventors Hall of Fame^® Inductees and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) officials. Winning teams, which receive cash prizes and patent acceleration, also will be announced on Oct. 15.

"The USPTO is proud to host and sponsor the 2026 Collegiate Inventors Competition because these students represent exactly what America's Innovation Agency is here to support: the next generation of inventors turning curiosity into invention, and invention into better tomorrows," said John A. Squires, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO. "Their work is a powerful reminder that the spirit of American ingenuity is alive and well and accelerating. We are proud to celebrate these remarkable finalists, help them see the power of intellectual property, and support them as they turn bold ideas into the technologies, companies and solutions that will shape America's next great chapter of innovation."

Established in 1990, the Collegiate Inventors Competition is a program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and is sponsored by the USPTO. Follow the National Inventors Hall of Fame on Facebook, LinkedIn, X and Instagram for updates and additional information.

UNDERGRADUATE FINALISTS

CPRight, University of Washington
Team Members: Shubham Bansal, Prisha Hemani, Deeya Sharma, Nikhita Vaddineni; Adviser: Tristan Jafari
Real-time guidance for emergency resuscitation: 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.

Flow-IO, University of Minnesota
Team Members: Anuk Dias, Shaliny Jadhav, Dilshan Rajan; Adviser: Gwenyth Fischer
A failsafe IO needle: 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.

KAIRS (Knee Artificial Intelligence Rehabilitation Sleeve), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Team Members: Samanyu Dixit, Hieu Minh Doan, Sahaj Sapovadia, Chinmay Singh; Adviser: Devin Hubbard
A smart solution for knee recovery: 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.

Lighted Oral Optics for Kids, Rice University
Team Members: Ankitha Challa, Andy Corliss, Komal Talloo, Nahom Zerai; Adviser: Sabia Abidi
A modern approach to pediatric exams: 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.

Vaskular, Dartmouth College
Team Member: Victoria Makalah King; Adviser: Kwame Owusu
Individualized care for patients at risk: 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 the hospital and at home.

GRADUATE FINALISTS

BioAxis, New York University
Team Members: Rayan Bargouth, Asser El Ashwah; Adviser: Richard Stein
Supporting rotator cuff healing: 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.

ClearView-Jaw, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Team Members: William McKay, Zachary Spears, Amogh Vellore; Advisers: Anish Ghodadra, Matthew Spector
Improving outcomes for head and neck cancer patients: 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.

CoFATE, University of Chicago
Team Member: Bryant Colin; Adviser: Aaron Esser-Kahn
A new perspective on drug discovery: 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.

NeuTrode, University of South Florida
Team Members: Bridget Clift, Cristina Ramirez-Vargas, Addison Whitehead; Adviser: Nathan Schilaty
Reliable technology for neurological care: 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.

SpectraSense, University of Washington
Team Members: Nathan Day-Holterhoff, Maxwell Mamishev, Rishi Sappidi, Maxwell Stafford; Adviser: Sep Makhsous
Rapid pesticide monitoring: 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.

About the Collegiate Inventors Competition
The Collegiate Inventors Competition encourages and drives innovation and entrepreneurship at the collegiate level. A program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, this competition recognizes and rewards the research, innovations and discoveries by college students and their advisers for projects leading to inventions that have the potential of receiving patent protection. Introduced in 1990, the competition has featured more than 500 innovators who have created cutting-edge, world-changing inventions, and awarded cash prizes to winning student teams for their innovative work and scientific achievement through the help of its sponsors. For more information, visit invent.org/collegiate-inventors.

CONTACT:
Ken Torisky
National Inventors Hall of Fame
[email protected]
234-901-6085

SOURCE Collegiate Inventors Competition