Finalists, Mentors and Judges
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.
Aishwarya Agrawal
Vesque Method - A Watering Method to Save Water
Globally, agriculture uses 70 percent of freshwater. My goal was to help reduce the amount of water that plants need, while ensuring that the plant is still healthy. I found a method of watering that can reduce the amount of water a plant needs by 50 percent by decreasing the time that pores are open.
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Amritha Praveen
ASD Screener - Early Risk Assessment of Autism Spectrum disorder using Machine Learning
Autism is one of the most common developmental disabilities that impact social and communication skills. While there is no cure, intensive early intervention can make a big difference in the quality of life for many children
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Asa Limmer
Prion Scanner
My new innovation would be to create a scanner with a programmed chip that would learn how to recogize PrP^Sc found in deer or elk in that area. As the scanner looks through the lymph nodes, obex, or tonsils, it will be going through the programmed information and if it notices the slightest trace of PrP^Sc it will mean that likely the deer has CWD.
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Austin Ewing
The Automated Car Garden
Austin developed The Automated Car Garden
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Asvini Thivakaran
Piezoelectric Power Generation from Automotive Tires
Global warming, climate change, and air pollution are some of the most prevalent global issues of today. Asnavi developed the Piezoelectric Power Generation from Automotive Tires
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Catherine Manley
Creating a Healthier Human Society
The Aquabot is my invention that uses thermoelectricity to condense clean drinking water out of the air without using a filtration system for people in need of clean water. It is self-sustainable and has very few parts so it will not break down easily. It is powered only by renewable resources and releases no byproducts. The Aquabot is portable and cheap to make it as accessible as possible for the people in need.
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Daniel Thomas
A Novel Dosing Pump to Prevent Clogs and Organic Overgrowth In AC Condensate Lines
Daniel developed a Novel Dosing Pump to Prevent Clogs and Organic Overgrowth In AC Condensate Lines
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Delisha Manuel
Piezoelectric Roads
Delisha developed Piezoelectric Roads
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Elizabeth Gill
A Dog’s Advanced Prosthetic Leg
This project is about an advanced prosthetic leg for canines that have lost one or more of their legs and need to fulfill their daily lives to their best ability.
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Harini Venkatesh
The Comptometrist: An Efficient Way to Determine Myopic Power
Harini developed The Comptometrist, a prototype designed to cut down the time needed to determine myopic power in a patient’s eyes.
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Henry Martin
Mood Melodies
Seeing as there is an especially heightened amount of stress with the ongoing pandemic and other global issues, I wanted to help people manage their anxiety. This led me to create a website that can help a user cope with negative emotions via music. The site feeds data from the user’s webcam into a neural network to analyze the user’s face and determine their emotion.
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Iraj Shroff
Smart Trash Can
Plastic poses a serious threat to the environment and wildlife. Over 8.3 billion metric tons of trash is added to landfills globally, out of which 6.3 billion metric tons is plastic waste. 79% of plastic waste is accumulating in landfills or littered in our environment, and very little is recycled. Plastic pollution will double by 2030.
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Isha Joshi
Tracking Parkinson’s Symptoms and Stages with HandPD Dataset in a Mobile App
Isha developed Tracking Parkinson’s Symptoms and Stages with HandPD Dataset in a Mobile App
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James Yu
Origami-Based Disaster-Relief Deployable Shelters
I designed an emergency disaster-relief shelter. This structure is a deployable pop-up shelter and is made of cardboard, providing victims of natural disasters who have lost shelter with temporary, affordable, portable, accessible, and recyclable shelter. The structure has a compact stowed configuration and a spacious deployed position.
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John Lee
A Novel MoS2 Electrode for Enhancing Electrochemical Hydrogen Production
Hydrogen (H2) can improve energy consumption by producing an alternative energy source to carbon-based fuels.
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Kaavya Tatavarty
Hear Me Out - Hyper-personalized Speech Recognition and Synthesis for the Speech Impaired
Imagine how you would feel if your mind was bursting with ideas but your mouth was struggling to let them out. This problem is all too familiar for 7.5 million people in the United States and 18.5 million people around the world who struggle with speech disabilities. In fact, 1 out of 12 children in the United States deals with some speech impairment, many of them stemming from conditions like down-syndrome, child apraxia of speech, or types of muscular dystrophy.
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Katherine Webb
Converting Sound into Electricity
The Conversion of Sound Waves to Electricity. Dynamic microphones mounted on street lamps on highways capture the sound waves of passing cars. Sound waves are mechanical waves, meaning they affect the matter the travel through, so when they enter the magnetic field inside the dynamic microphone an electrical current is induced into the conductive wire.
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Kriesh Tivare
Nifty Nanogenerators! - Electricity Generation Using Triboelectricity
Over the years, hundreds of tons of carbon have been emitted into the atmosphere due to causes such as nonrenewable energy sources. Carbon Emissions have had a toll on the Earth and will eventually be irreversible.
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Lam Le
Fish flakes from plastic
Every day approximately 1369 tons of styrofoam are buried in U.S Landfills. Thirty percent of the world’s landfills are styrofoam. Styrene is classified as a carcinogen by the EPA and yet we still use it every day. Used Styrofoam cannot be recycled into new styrofoam. However, the larvae of certain darkling beetles(mealworms, super worms) can eat styrofoam.
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Leanne Fan
Finsen Headphones: Treating Mid-Ear Infections Using Machine Learning and Phototherapy
Leanne developed the Finsen Headphones: Treating Mid-Ear Infections Using Machine Learning and Phototherapy
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Luka Nguyen
NOMADS Nutrient Optimized Mangrove Drop Sheath for Aerial Reforestation
Mangroves are being threatened. They are essential to life. NOMADS Nutrient optimized Mangrove Drop sheath is an invention made to protect a red mangrove propagule during UAV aerial reforestation. They are made from molded pulp and shaped to embed in the mud and protect young mangrove plants dropped from drones during aerial reforestation.
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Maya Trutschl
Microcontroller-Driven Remote HVAC Monitoring System for a Greener Planet
The computer revolution over the past few decades has followed the laws predicted by Gordon Moore, who in 1965 observed that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Making these devices smaller and more accessible, combined with open-source code opened a whole new world for enthusiasts and professionals alike.
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Nosrat Montaha
UMT
This is a project I’ve nicknamed UMT that has the potential to provide a new method of sterilizing milk that can be available widespread to those in need.
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Parker Welsh
Clean Coal Energy System
In my project, I solved how to use bacteria to absorb carbon dioxide emissions produced by coal power plants while also producing additional electricity. First CO2 is absorbed by the Chlorobaculum Tepidum. C. Tepidum then releases extracellular ATP which can be put through hydrolysis producing electricity.
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