NYC teen turns origami into award-winning disaster relief innovation

Fourteen-year-old Miles Wu of New York City won the $25,000 top prize at the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge for his origami-based engineering project.

Competing in Washington, D.C., he demonstrated how Miura ori folds, a repeating pleated pattern that collapses and expands in a single motion, can be configured to support more than 9,000 times their own weight. Judges selected his project from 30 finalists who had advanced through a field of about 2,000 students nationwide.

Wu said he developed the idea after learning about recent natural disasters, including January’s wildfires in Southern California and Hurricane Helene, which struck the Southeast in 2024. He also researched how origami has been applied across STEM fields, including medical device design and compact engineering systems. Describing the challenge facing current shelter technology, he told Business Insider, “A problem with current deployable structures and emergency structures is, for example, tents are sometimes strong, sometimes they can compact really small, and sometimes they’re easily deployable, but almost never are they all three, but Miura ori could potentially solve that problem.”

Wu tested multiple variations of Miura ori at home using controlled weight measurements to determine how small changes in angle and segment size affected strength. He said the fold stood out to him because it is “really strong, light, and folds down really compactly,” which aligned with the structural goals of his project.

Organizers said his findings could support future work on lightweight and rapidly deployable emergency shelters, and Wu plans to continue developing the research as he moves toward higher education.