The March event was the culmination of the second annual STEM competition hosted by , a national curriculum company. Students in grades 7 to 12 were invited to submit projects last fall that addressed real-world problems in six categories: aerospace, food, technology, health and medicine, energy and the environment. 

From thousands of submissions, 106 students from 47 states and four U.S. territories were selected as National STEM Champions and advanced to the festival to present their findings.

Here are six students who attended the festival and their innovations:

Sammit Chidambaram, 16

Junior at Dunlap High School, Dunlap, Illinois

Sammit came up with the idea for his project during his high school engineering and design class. 

He wanted to explore how to remove contaminants from water in a cost-effective way after learning how many — and their impact on children. One found that nearly 70% of young kids in Chicago are exposed to lead through drinking water.

Sammit’s idea developed from a pipe filter to a removable spout for public water fountains. 

“I simply made a spout for the water fountains and put certain filters inside of it — like as well as hollow fiber membranes — which both assist with removing different types of heavy metals,” he said. “I was actually able to screw these onto water fountains and get it to work. It’s a much lower-cost alternative to the normal methods.”

Sammit’s product costs about $5.50 apiece, which would be easier for low-income schools to purchase instead of removing lead pipes from their buildings, he said.

“I​​’ve done science fairs since eighth grade, and it’s just really, really fun. Not only nerding out about what I like, but watching other people nerd out about their own projects,” he said. “Being a STEM Champion has kind of given me the motivation and, honestly, the confidence to continue working on this project, and I’m really excited to see where I can move with it next.”

Divinefavour Osuji, 17

Senior at Lane Technical High School, Chicago

Divinefavour is from Nigeria, where workers sometimes lose their limbs in industrial accidents. Because each prosthetic can , Divinefavour wanted to create one that was cost-effective.

“With how much money the average family in Nigeria makes, they can’t necessarily afford to buy prosthetics,” he said. “Even in the United States, a cosmetic prosthetic can cost up to $5,000, and then myoelectric prosthetics — controlled by muscle contractions — can cost anything from $20,000 to $100,000.”

Divinefavour used 3-D printing to create two versions of a myoelectric hand prosthetic. The first design used surface muscle sensors attached to the prosthetic that tracked contractions, but the movements were sometimes inconsistent. His second design used computer recognition software to track hand motions.

“The idea is that you have a little camera module, and assuming the individual has another working limb, essentially what happens is the webcam views the movement of the hand and mimics that movement into the prosthetic design,” Divinefavour said.

Both versions were brought to the National STEM Festival. 

Riddik Sri Satya Neetipalli, 12

Seventh-grader at Cab Calloway High School of the Arts, Wilmington, Delaware

This is Riddik’s second year as a National STEM Champion. In 2024, he created a project to help capture water from air. His passion transitioned into inventing a water quality detection tool powered by artificial intelligence for this year’s festival.

After six months of work, Riddik created a small, hard case with data sensors that can be placed in water and detect pH level, temperature and cleanliness. The information is transmitted to a smartphone app.

“It visually shows and tells people if their drinking water is safe,” he said.

Riddik said he wants to continue STEM through school and eventually become CEO of his own company that helps people around the world.

“Since a young age, I’ve really loved STEM,” he said. “I like learning new things and questioning things. I really like it.”

Bryan Hijam, 18

Senior at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute

Hijam started researching prostate cancer after landing a position at a local professor’s lab while still in high school. 

Through the , a Baltimore nonprofit for youth STEM education, Hijam was able to leave school early to work at the lab. More than a year ago, he began his experiment for the National STEM Festival and focused on helping the body recognize and fight prostate cancer.

Hijam’s project uses a synthetically developed antibody to target a pathway that cancer cells use to evade the immune system. 

“My project aimed to block this pathway from happening,” he said. “So your immune cells are further able to recognize the cancer cells and then kill the cancer cells.”

Hijam’s goal is for the approach to be incorporated into immunotherapy, along with traditional treatment like chemotherapy, to improve outcomes for patients with advanced prostate cancer.

“The whole experiment as a whole took six months or seven months because there was a lot of trial and error,” he said. “I had to learn a lot of different techniques and read a lot of different essays. And some of those were the first time I’d ever done them.”

Aadhi Umamageswaran, 16

Junior at West High School, Salt Lake City

For her project, Aadhi created a green alternative to commercial bandages, which contribute to pollution from medical waste and . 

“I basically made my own homemade biodegradable adhesive bandages for topical drug delivery from materials that I found in my kitchen pantry,” she said.

Aadhi said she made glue from flour, wheat and rice so her bandages could stick to skin. The glue is mixed with water and natural healing ingredients including aloe vera and turmeric. The bandages themselves are made out of seaweed and rice paper.

“I found that it withstands a lot of vigorous body movements, and it’s just as effective as commercial bandages, but a lot more cost-effective,” she said. “You can make them as you need them, and it won’t degrade into microplastics.”

Aadhi said she was excited to present her project to the public and for others to see what STEM can do.

“It’s really cool to learn about all the other problems that are happening in the world and really creative approaches to solving those problems,” Aadhi said. “It’s also cool to learn from others to see how we can improve our own project.”

Sara DeVolld, 17

Junior at Connections School, Soldotna, Alaska

Alaska’s dark winters inspired Sara to create , which combines her passion for art with STEM.

She creates dresses and costumes with LED lights and motorized parts to bring “light and joy to a world that can seem dark and overwhelming.”

Sara said that because Alaskans are more prone to depressive conditions like than people who live farther south, she makes her clothing to raise awareness of suicide prevention. In 2022, Alaska had the in the nation.

Two of her projects were included in the National STEM Festival: a blue dress with LED lights and a gold gown that comes with a pair of 6-foot motorized wings. Each creation takes her 150 to 350 hours to make.

Sara said she’s received a lot of positive feedback for her products, especially for her work combining design and technology.

“I also want to show young women that we don’t have to choose between the arts and the sciences,” she said. “I want to share with them that we can do both.”

Kim, a 12th grade student at West Lafayette High School, discovered his dog, Joy, had heartworm disease and ordered medicine through an online pharmacy.

But the medicine Kim ordered would not only be ineffective but also aggravate Joy’s illness even more.

Motivated by his dog’s health scare, Kim designed a way for people to verify the authenticity of pharmaceutical products — by printing an edible QR code directly on the medicine.

Kim was one of in middle and high school who presented their inventions and research projects focused on solving key global issues at the in Washington, DC.  

“There have been countless tragedies and deaths caused by either substandard, falsified or diverted pharmaceutical products,” Kim told ����Ӱ��. “So I’m glad to have had this opportunity to raise more awareness of counterfeit medicine.”

Hosted by and the , student innovators were selected from an array of nationwide competitions, including the where more than 2,500 students submitted projects across six categories: Environmental Stewardship, Future Foods, Health & Medicine, Powering the Planet, Tech for Good and Space Innovation.

Here are five student innovators featured at the National STEM Festival:

Joshua Kim, 18

West Lafayette High School · West Lafayette, Indiana

Among more than 50,000 online pharmacies worldwide, Kim found only 3 percent operate and distribute medicine legally — contributing to the annual deaths of over one million people.

Kim said the measures most pharmacies use to reduce counterfeit concerns are “limited by low security,” such as only tracking medicine through its exterior packaging.

“It’s easy for medicine to be removed from their packaging…and dose level securities are either limited by the need for expensive technology or trained personnel,” Kim said.

“So this means patients at home do not have access to ways of verifying their medicine.”

Kim believes his edible QR code will allow people to ensure they are receiving genuine and legitimate medicine.

Ashley Valencia, 17

Harvest Preparatory Academy · Yuma, Arizona

Self-conscious about her crooked teeth, Arizona high schooler Ashley Valencia saw how expensive dental care can be growing up in a low-income family. But it wasn’t just her family that couldn’t afford dental care — many of her neighbors also struggled to afford it. 

Valencia, a 12th grade student at Harvest Preparatory Academy, channeled her insecurity to help students in developing countries who have even less access to proper oral hygiene products — by creating an affordable toothpaste and mouthwash using their native plants.

“I always knew I wanted to do something in medicine so when I thought about different [research] topics close to me, I started to think about my past experiences,” Valencia told ����Ӱ��.

“That’s why I created my own oral treatments that were easily accessible and affordable to people who might not have access to the things I had,” she added.

Valencia said she shared her research with public schools in the Philippines to address their students’ dental concerns.

At the festival, Valencia said she plans to travel to developing countries across South and Southeast Asia to share her oral hygiene products.

“Because I come from a school that doesn’t have a lot of resources…being able to attend the festival and present my research to all of the important people that were there was really exciting,” Valencia said.

Clarisse Telles Alvares Coelho, 18

New Mexico Military Institute · Roswell, New Mexico

From lion’s mane to king oyster, New Mexico high schooler and longtime vegetarian Clarisse Telles Alvares Coelho loves eating all types of mushrooms.

Coelho, a 12th grade student at the New Mexico Military Institute, said the misconceptions of mushrooms inspired her research project on their health benefits — particularly the abundance of a soluble fiber called beta-glucan.

“I knew many people didn’t like mushrooms…but what if I was able to make them change their minds,” Coelho told ����Ӱ��. “With beta-glucan acting in your immune system, our metabolism works faster.”

Coelho said she was “very surprised” to have the opportunity to present her project at the festival.

“It was such a great feeling because there was so much hard work and late nights put into researching this project…[so] it was so amazing to be recognized,” Coelho said.

Alicia Wright, 17

Rockdale Magnet School for Science and Technology · Conyers, Georgia

Concerned by our global carbon footprint, Georgia high schooler Alicia Wright discovered the majority of CO2 emissions come from the cement used in construction.

Wright, an 11th grade student at Rockdale Magnet School for Science and Technology, found a way to replace cement with mycelium — a type of fungi that can be transformed into a biodegradable construction material.

“I was inspired by the complexity of mycelium and how fungus works,” Wright told ����Ӱ��. “This will better the environment so that future generations can enjoy as we have.”

At the festival, Wright said the diversity of students presenting their projects with her felt “empowering.”

“It was very encouraging to see people with my skin color and gender presenting with me,” Wright said.

Haasini Mendu, 16

William Mason High School · Mason, Ohio

Ohio high schooler Haasini Mendu came up with a way to improve medication dosage for Parkinson’s disease — a disorder that causes involuntary body movement, often called tremors.

Mendu, an 11th grade student at William Mason High School, designed a wearable device that quantifies the number of tremors someone has and automatically sends the information to an app she created called “TremorSense.”

She said the information is processed through an “AI-based machine learning” filter to distinguish between tremor and non-tremor movements.

Mendu said the opportunity to meet other students and build connections was her favorite part of the festival.

“It was very easy to make some friends and also learn about their very cool inventions and ideas,” Mendu told ����Ӱ��.

“Having this recognition…feels motivating to continue working on my skills [because] there were so many people interested in what I’m trying to do with my research.”

Moved by his cousin’s plight, Juarez designed a tool to help the deaf community — a device that uses a camera to translate sign language into a written and spoken form.

Through the first-ever this Saturday, April 13, Juarez will be one of to present their inventions and research projects that address solutions to critical global issues.

The festival will showcase student innovators from numerous nationwide competitions, including EXPLR’s where more than 2,500 students in grades 6-12 conceived and submitted STEM projects across six categories: Environmental Stewardship, Future Foods, Health & Medicine, Powering the Planet, Tech for Good and Space Innovation.

“All of these kids are so cool and have such incredible projects that it’s going to be bananas,” Kari Byron, co-founder of and director of the festival, told ����Ӱ��.

Byron said the festival idea grew out of a conversation she had with the U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

Byron, who previously hosted the Obama administration’s , pitched a plan to design a larger version of the former event.

“I looked at him and said ‘What if we built it for you? What if we make it bigger and better than it has ever been before,’” Byron said. “So it’s not a continuation of the White House Science Fair — it’s a completely new festival that’s going to be so much bigger because we want a national conversation about STEM 365 days a year.”

Jenny Buccos, co-founder and chief executive officer of EXPLR, said the festival is a great way for school leaders and decision makers to learn more about “what kids are interested in and what we might not be teaching in schools.”

“How are they learning to make patent pending medical devices? How are they learning about protecting their IP? Where is this happening, and if it’s not in the traditional classroom, how do we bridge that gap,” Buccos told ����Ӱ��.

Students like Juarez, 17, are excited to have the platform to present projects centered around what they are passionate about.

“This opportunity is confirmation that people care about the hearing impaired and deaf…and is a great way for me to continue to educate more people,” Juarez told ����Ӱ��.

Buccos said the public has the opportunity to meet the students and see their inventions through more than 100 and events in Washington, DC.

“If you are in desperate need of inspiration and hope for the future, come to the events…this is the opportunity to meet some of the most brilliant young minds working in the country,” Buccos said.

“Everybody says kids are the future,” said Buccos, “but these kids are literally solving problems now.”

To check out the National STEM Festival this Saturday, the public must to secure their spot.