Approximately 250 K-12 student inventors from 40 schools across the state — and for the first time, from select schools in Alabama — arrived on the Georgia Tech campus March 13 for the 2024 K-12 Inventure Prize State Finals 10th anniversary celebration.

In this year’s competition,108 student teams all advanced from the online qualifier and regional qualifying events of the STEM invention/entrepreneurship program. The students were joined by family, friends, teachers, as well as Georgia Tech students, staff and faculty and community partners, many of whom worked as volunteer judges or helped with registration or other event duties. More than 30 student inventors were honored at the ceremony with awards. Thirty-two winners, singled out by contest judges, will advance to the next round of the competition, Invention Convention U.S. Nationals at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan June 5-7.

The K-12 InVenture Prize, based in the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC), challenges kindergarten through high school students to identify real-world problems and design novel solutions through analysis, creativity, and the engineering design process.

“We worked hard to make sure that this year’s State Finals event was very special because we were celebrating the 10th anniversary of our program,” said Danyelle Larkin, who was named as the new director of the K-12 InVenture Prize program at the ceremony. “There were so many amazing highlights and so much joy and positivity. It was truly touching.”

“We really saw how this work has continued to develop and mature over the years,” she explained. “Our panel discussion on patents included a student inventor/entrepreneur who is now enrolled as a college student at Tech as well as two high school student inventors who are successfully building a business around a school safety invention which they refined in our competition.”

“We were also so happy to be able to shine the spotlight on the truly incredible teachers who have worked as our partners over this last ‘Decade of Discovery.’ Our teachers make this program possible, so we created a new award to bring attention to their essential contributions,” Larkin added. “We are also seeing some of our students year after year, refining and redesigning, continuing to make improvements to their inventions, working hard to push things forward. And, really, that’s what this is all about.”

At the ceremony, each first-place team received a patent search or patent filing offered by longtime supporters, the Georgia Intellectual Property Alliance (GIPA). Cameron Schriner, an engineer with local software company IronCAD, also presented at the event.

Award-winning student projects included:

• A prototyped water testing machine that provides real-time, accurate data on water safety conditions;
• A battery constructed in part from sustainable carbon derived from tea leaves;
• A game that encourages recycling;
• An apron that puts out small house fires;
• A collar that helps keep dogs cool in sweltering summer weather;
• A drain storage device that removes microplastics from water;
• A three-string guitar-like instrument that simplifies playing with an automated chord system;
• A grocery-shopping app for sight-impaired people;
• A device that uses molecularly imprinted polymers to detect allergens in food; and
• An A.I.-powered research tool that transforms multiple web searches into organized, shareable notes.

In addition to the awards ceremony, students participated in hands-on STEM activities and visited the Paper and Clay craft studio for a wide variety of fun, creative projects. The day of events concluded with the annual InVenture Prize at Georgia Tech competition at the Ferst Center for the Arts that aired live on Georgia Public Broadcasting and online. Nicknamed "American Idol for Nerds," the Emmy Award-winning InVenture Prize at Georgia Tech is an interdisciplinary innovation competition open to all Tech undergraduate students.

To see a full list of winners and their projects, please visit https://k12inventure.gatech.edu/competition2024.

For more information on the K-12 InVenture Prize curriculum and competition, please visit https://k12inventure.gatech.edu or https://www.k12inventure.org.

—Randy Trammell, CEISMC Communications