🇺🇸 Aiden Jo

Origami engineering is a legitimate and fast-moving field. Fold patterns such as the Miura-ori — developed for deploying solar arrays in space — allow a rigid sheet to collapse and expand along predictable creases without stretching the material. The same mathematics governs airbag folding, stents and deployable shelters. Applying it to consumer packaging is an unglamorous but high-leverage use: a container that reliably collapses to a flat sheet reduces the volume that has to be collected, hauled and sorted, and it does so without changing what the container is made of.

Aiden's reason for entering the competition was about audience as much as achievement. "The challenge allows students in middle school to showcase their innovative ideas to a community, and I have always wanted to share my research and findings with other passionate students," he wrote in his finalist profile. "I also saw this challenge as an opportunity to learn from other students' solutions while improving my deep thinking skills and scientific knowledge when developing my project."

He was explicit that the point was to get the design out of the notebook. He described the challenge as "a platform where I could advance my project to the next level and bring my model into people's daily lives, creating a lasting impact" — and concluded that it was "the great place to start my scientific and engineering journey." That is a fourteen-year-old naming deployment, not validation, as the goal.

His choice of favourite invention of the last century is consistent with a maker's temperament: the 3D printer. "Although it may seem not as significant as the internet, it has truly changed the way people create products, prototypes and useful items," he wrote. "The accessible machine allows people to easily create innovations at a cheap cost while promoting creativity in young children. It has also introduced our world to new methods of production by being able to print with virtually any material imaginable." He noted the rise of food printing, and argued that in the near future 3D printing "could help our planet survive natural disasters, battle climate change, and improve overall quality of life."

Through the summer of 2026 he works with Lalitha Ganapatibhotla, a Senior Product Development Specialist in 3M's Electronic Materials Solutions Division whose research background is in the physics of polymer electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries, studied through neutron scattering. For a project whose central risk is material fatigue — a crease that must fold and hold thousands of times without tearing — a polymer physicist is the right person to ask.

His stated ambition is environmental engineering, and he traces it to an ordinary childhood. "From a young age, I have enjoyed building Legos and engineering my ideas while cherishing wildlife and nature in my surroundings," he wrote. "In the future, I aspire to work with a team of passionate individuals, who each have unique qualifications and ideas, and create a lasting impact on society and our natural world through my innovations." On 12–13 October 2026 he presents Squeeze-gami at the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, where one of the ten finalists will be named America's Top Young Scientist and receive $25,000.