Finalists, Mentors and Judges
The 2026 3M Young Scientist Challenge Finalists and State Merit Winners have been announced! Use the tabs below to check out their big ideas and explore all finalists, winners, and 3M Scientist mentors!
Today’s Innovators
Get to know the diverse personalities of students, 3M Mentors, and others who have contributed their unique talents to the 3M Young Scientist Challenge. Use the tabs below to explore exciting ideas and inspirations from previous years’ challenges.
Aaisha Asif
Muscle Power of Mussels
Meet Aaisha. Aaisha is developing a mussel-inspired, eco-friendly adhesive made from natural proteins and iron-based crosslinkers that creates strong bonds while reducing pollution.
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Aarav Malinowski
Sensor-Powered Smoke Detector Add-On
Aarsh Sahu
Smart Traffic Light Using Pixel Based Background Subtraction
Abigail Stein
Allergy Spoon
Meet Abigail. Abigail created Allergy Spoon, a smart utensil that detects allergens in food and changes color to help prevent life-threatening allergic reactions.
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Adhrit Mishra
CocoScrub
Agastya Pande
AquaAlert: A Low Cost Colorimetric Lead Detection System
Ahana Paul
nYOUroGlove: A smart piano-integrated robotic therapy to improve bimanual coordination and dexterity
Ahmed Abdelsalam
VERDA: Nature-Inspired Energy Harvesters for a Sustainable Future
Meet Ahmed. Ahmed developed VERDA, an innovative technology that harvests energy from movement like walking, wind, and waves to support more sustainable power solutions.
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Aiden Jo
Squeeze-gami: Folding Our Way to Recycle a container
Meet Aiden. Aiden invented Squeeze-gami, an origami-inspired solution that flattens completely to reduce waste and improve sustainable packaging.
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Akshay Lakshminarasimhan
Self-supervised ML Modelling for Latent state representation of Geomagnetic Structure and visualizing as iOS App
Albert Liu
Powering Life-Critical Sensors for Decades: The PNP Cell, A Photon-Based Nuclear Prototype Battery with Optional Radiation Detection
Amita Barik
The Sentinel - A novel passive NIR system for non-invasive drug detection in school security checkpoints.
Anisha Nachnani
The MIRAGE system (Microplastic Identification, Removal and Adaptive Green Engine)
Arika Kundu
LIGNEX - A Novel Biosorption Based Approach that Uses Agricultural Waste Material to Eliminate Pesticide Residues from Fresh Produce.
Meet Arika. Arika designed an innovative method using agricultural waste like peanut shells to remove pesticides from produce, combining material science with simple tools to make safer food more accessible.
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Arshiya Ghosh
HELIOS (Heat-stress Environmental & Lymphatic Interactive Operational System)
Ashwin Sundaresan
Smart Stove: Automatic Stove Shutoff Using Motion Detection and Real Time Alerts to Prevent Fires
Ayan Roychowdhury
FreshAlert: Detecting Food Spoilage Before Your Senses Can.
Cayden Joseph
BiteSight: Development of a Deep Learning Mobile Application for Bug Bite Identification
Darsh Goel
Thermal Carbon Upcycling (TCU) Core
Harshith Nelabhotla
Real-Time ASL Word Recognition System
Ishanvi Sakharpe
Dolphin Guard
James Beecroft
SeedRover
Kapish Arora
Savior: A Multimodal Voice and Sensor Based Walking Companion
