4 Student Teams' Innovations Win 2025 Collegiate Inventors Competition

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 17, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- A glimpse into the future of American innovation and emerging technological trends from the nation's brightest young innovators — from extracting drinking water from humidity in the air to a portable device that detects peanut presence in foods — were recognized and honored this week at the 2025 Collegiate Inventors Competition^®, an annual competition for college and university students and their advisers.

Finalist teams (five Undergraduate and five Graduate), consisting of 23 students from nine colleges and universities across the United States, presented their inventions to an esteemed panel of final-round judges composed of the most influential inventors and innovation experts in the nation — National Inventors Hall of Fame^® Inductees and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) officials.

"The Collegiate Inventors Competition highlights our nation's next generation of innovation game-changers — students from across the country who are leading through creativity, persistence and problem solving to make a positive impact around the world," said National Inventors Hall of Fame Chief Executive Officer Monica Jones. "We are proud to host this event at the United States Patent and Trademark Office and provide the Finalists with opportunities to learn directly from our Hall of Fame Inductees and intellectual property experts. It is vital that we continue to support young inventors as they work to bring their ideas to market and create a better future for us all."

Established in 1990, the Collegiate Inventors Competition is a program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and is sponsored by the USPTO. In addition to cash awards, the winning teams also receive a USPTO Patent Acceleration Certificate.

FIRST-PLACE WINNERS ($10,000 PRIZE)

UNDERGRADUATE:
Sense , Washington University in St. Louis
Team Members: Myles (Max) Miller, Nicolas Chicoine, Cameron Freeman; Adviser: Barani Raman
A smart new way to avoid allergens: 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.

GRADUATE:
AirGel , University of Texas at Austin
Team Members: Weixin Guan, Yaxuan Zhao; Adviser: Guihua Yu
A sustainable drinking water solution: 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.

AirGel also is the winner of the 2025 People's Choice Award ($2,000 prize).

RUNNER-UP WINNERS ($5,000 PRIZE)

UNDERGRADUATE:
BiliRoo , Calvin University
Team Member: Daniel John; Adviser: Jon VerLee
Better care for infants: 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, nonelectric 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.

GRADUATE:
RedAlert Living Sensors , Cornell University
Team Members: Jacob Belding, Ava Forystek; Advisers: Abraham Stroock, Margaret Frank, Neil Mattson
A vivid idea for smarter fertilizer use: 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, benefiting agriculture and the environment.

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 more than $1 million of support 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
ktorisky@invent.org
234-901-6085

SOURCE Collegiate Inventors Competition