The MYCrave Young Innovators Index

How the index is organised

The index has five parts. The Ranked 50 is our editorial ranking of the most consequential inventions by teenagers, each with a full story in the companion article. The Regeneron ISEF 2025 class covers 53 Grand Award projects from the world's largest pre-college science fair, including every Indian finalist who won a Grand Award. More young inventors lists verified teen inventors who did not make the ranked 50. Historical and everyday inventions covers the trampoline-and-earmuffs tradition. Child inventors lists people who did their headline work before 13 and are often mis-described as teenagers; we include them with their real ages.

Every name links to a profile page in the Young Innovators section, where the full story, sources, and any patent numbers live. "No public IP record found" means our search of Google Patents, Justia, NIF India and award-body pages on 31 August 2026 turned up nothing; it does not prove nothing was filed. For the ISEF 2025 class the label carries an extra caution, explained in Part 2.

Quick answer: what the index shows

Of 133 young innovators, 22 hold or held a granted patent: 16 personal grants, 4 portfolios held through a company the inventor founded, and 2 grants that later lapsed for unpaid fees. Beyond those, 3 applications are pending or published, 1 international application ceased, 1 application was abandoned after publication, 1 provisional was never converted, 16 report a filing for which no application or patent number can be found, 3 chose open source, 1 holds a pre-patent royal privilege, and 85 have no public IP record. Those 85 include all 53 ISEF 2025 projects in Part 2, which are research projects first and too recent for any filing to have been published. India accounts for 27 entries in-country and 15 more of Indian origin abroad.

Part 1 — The Ranked 50 (India and the world)

Our editorial ranking of the fifty most consequential inventions by teenagers, judged on reach, IP or company outcome, independent recognition and what the inventor's method teaches. The full stories, with an IP note on each, are in 50 Teenage Inventors and Their Innovations: India and the World, Ranked. The table gives the short version.

Ages are given as ranges where sources disagree. Four entries (Rao, Umashankar, Kumari, Banerjee) did their first work before 13 and were recognised as teenagers; the table shows both.

Part 2 — The Regeneron ISEF 2025 class: 53 Grand Award projects

Regeneron ISEF is the world's largest pre-college science competition; in May 2025 nearly 1,700 finalists from more than 60 countries competed in Columbus, Ohio. The projects below are all Grand Award winners (First to Fourth Award in their categories), verified against the Society for Science awards record. They are research projects and prototypes, not products, and several are explicitly research-stage. We have no record of a patent for any of them, but that absence means little yet: patent applications are normally published only 18 months after filing, so a filing made around the May 2025 fair would not appear on any public register before late 2026. We have not run a register search for this class and will do so once that window opens. Where a performance figure appears, it comes from the Society for Science press release and carries the hedge the original used. The order below is thematic, not the fair's placing.

Indian finalists at ISEF 2025

Five projects from schools in India won Grand Awards in 2025. The strongest finish was Anshul Bhatt's Second Award for PawPath (ranked 46 above); the four below deserve their own profiles.

Keyaan Shah and Vanya Gupta (Maharashtra, India) — SoundKraft. Gamified, sensory-adaptive screening for cognitive impairment in older adults. Behavioral and Social Sciences, Third Award.

Pranet Khetan (Haryana, India) — Speaker-independent speech recognition for dysarthric speech in low-resource languages. Biomedical Engineering, Fourth Award.

Aarav Rastogi and Abhimanyu Singh (Maharashtra, India) — LocustTrack. Forecasting desert-locust distribution under climate change. Earth and Environmental Sciences, Fourth Award.

Ananya Ganapathy (Karnataka, India) — Prediction model for colorectal cancer from gut-microbiome biomarkers. Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Fourth Award.

Health and accessibility

Chanyoung Kim, Eeshaan Dev Prashanth and Samuel Skotnikov (TX, USA) — NeuroFlex: A Brain-Controlled Bionic Leg. Teen innovators Chanyoung Kim, Eeshaan Dev Prashanth and Samuel Skotnikov developed NeuroFlex, a cost-conscious prosthetic leg that reads movement intent through a non-invasive EEG headband. The team built and tested the prototype with a single prosthesis user rather than in the abstract. At ISEF 2025: First Award; Gordon E. Moore Award for Positive Outcomes for Future Generations ($50,000). Reported 98 per cent accuracy comes from a single-user test.

Adam Kovalčík (Nitra, Slovakia) — A Faster, Lower-Cost Way to Make Antiviral Medicines. Adam Kovalčík developed a shorter route for producing aza-C-nucleosides associated with antiviral medicines. Starting with an inexpensive material derived from corn-husk waste, his process reportedly reduced a 15-step synthesis to 10 steps, improved output and greatly lowered the estimated material cost. At ISEF 2025: First Award; George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award ($100,000).

Ethan Yan (MA, USA) — RetinAI: A Wearable System for Eye-Tumour Screening. Ethan Yan developed RetinAI, an artificial-intelligence system pairing a wearable headset with retinal imaging for possible eye-tumour screening outside specialist clinics. The project focuses on low-resource settings, where travel, equipment and ophthalmology capacity can delay detection. At ISEF 2025: First Award; EUCYS award (trip to the European Union Contest for Young Scientists).

Uma Sthanu (TX, USA) — Research into Regenerating Damaged Neurons. Uma Sthanu investigated whether regulating prostaglandin E2 could support the regeneration of damaged neurons. Using laboratory techniques to study the response of injured brain cells, she explored a therapeutic direction relevant to neurological injury and disease. At ISEF 2025: First Award; Mary Sue Coleman Award for Life Science Innovation & Impact ($10,000). Research-stage; not a treatment.

Emma Zhang (NY, USA) — AI-Based Photoacoustic Breast-Cancer Screening. Emma Zhang explored artificial intelligence applied to photoacoustic imaging for future breast-cancer screening. Photoacoustic systems combine light and sound to reveal tissue information, while AI may help interpret complex signals. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Kayley Xu (CA, USA) — A Wearable Stethoscope Array. Kayley Xu designed a wearable array capable of localising cardiopulmonary sounds and suppressing interference through beamforming. Instead of a clinician placing one stethoscope head at a time, an array can compare multiple measurements and identify where a sound originates. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Ansh Malhotra and Anush Devkar (VA, USA) — BrailleSense: A Modular, Lower-Cost Braille Display. Ansh Malhotra and Anush Devkar developed BrailleSense, a modular approach to accessible Braille displays. Refreshable Braille devices can be expensive, making maintainability and component cost central design considerations rather than secondary business questions. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Benjamin Lothamer (IA, USA) — An Adaptable 3D-Printed Upper-Limb Prosthesis. Benjamin Lothamer designed a gear-based upper-limb prosthesis using additive manufacturing and a viscoelastic material. Adaptability, manufacturability and mechanical simplicity can be vital when a prosthetic must fit different users and remain serviceable. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Brad Wu (AZ, USA) — A Brain-Driven Forearm Exoskeleton for Stroke Rehabilitation. Brad Wu developed a brain-driven forearm exoskeleton with adaptive neuroregulation feedback for people recovering from stroke. Rehabilitation technology becomes more meaningful when assistance responds to neurological intent and changes with the user’s progress. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Julia Maksimowicz (Podlaskie, Poland) — Therapiez: Piezoelectric Wearable Wound-Healing Research. Julia Maksimowicz developed Therapiez, a piezoelectric system incorporated into a wearable medical device for accelerated wound-healing therapy. Piezoelectric materials generate an electrical response under mechanical stress, creating opportunities for wearables that interact with healing tissue. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Robotics

Chinmayi Goyal (NY, USA) — MyoAssist: User-Driven AI Exoskeleton Control. Chinmayi Goyal created MyoAssist, an AI-based exoskeletal control system for people with movement disabilities. Its user-driven framing is significant: assistive robotics must respond to the wearer’s intention and daily needs, not merely execute a laboratory movement sequence. At ISEF 2025: First Award.

Akash Ragam and Tanay Chitlur (OR, USA) — IntelliCane: An AI Navigation Cane for Visual Impairment. Akash Ragam and Tanay Chitlur developed IntelliCane, combining a servo-guided cane, a monocular camera, deep-learning environmental mapping and agentic decision logic. The goal is real-time obstacle avoidance that goes beyond a passive warning and helps guide the user through changing surroundings. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Hieu Le and Quan Cao (Viet Nam) — An Autonomous Wheelchair for People with ALS. Hieu Le and Quan Cao designed an autonomous wheelchair intended to support both mobility and communication for people living with ALS. Combining these needs matters because declining muscle control can affect movement and expression at the same time. At ISEF 2025: Fourth Award.

Louis Liu (AZ, USA) — FallPoint: Contactless Fall Detection with 4D Radar. Louis Liu created FallPoint, a fall-detection approach using 4D millimetre-wave radar, point-cloud analysis and a recurrent neural network. Radar can monitor motion without recording an identifiable video image, creating an important design conversation around safety, low-light performance and privacy. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Jiya Joshi and Sai Spoorthi Maram (TX, USA) — A Soft-Robotic AI-Assisted Colonoscope. Jiya Joshi and Sai Spoorthi Maram engineered a hydraulically actuated, AI-assisted soft-robotic colonoscope intended to reduce patient risk and improve usability. Soft robotics is attractive in delicate internal procedures because it can replace rigid motion with more compliant structures. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Matthew Li and Taha Rawjani (VA, USA) — MobyGlobal: AI Buoys That Detect Whales in Real Time. Matthew Li and Taha Rawjani developed MobyGlobal, a whale-detection network using a custom convolutional neural network and 3D-printed buoys. A distributed ocean-sensing system could support research and help reduce dangerous encounters when deployed responsibly. At ISEF 2025: Fourth Award. Reduction of dangerous encounters is a stated aim, not a result.

Sydney West (WA, USA) — An Intelligent Underwater Robot for Coral-Reef Monitoring. Sydney West designed an intelligent remotely operated vehicle for coral-reef research and monitoring. An underwater robot can collect repeatable visual and environmental observations while reducing the need for frequent human dives in difficult conditions. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Adrian Alvarez (FL, USA) — A Multispectral Robot for Plant-Disease Suppression. Adrian Alvarez designed a terrestrial robot using multispectral imaging to identify and suppress plant disease. Multispectral cameras can reveal stress signatures that are difficult to see with ordinary colour images, supporting earlier and more selective intervention. At ISEF 2025: Fourth Award.

Timothy Wilson (New South Wales, Australia) — Cuddle and Comfort Chimp: A Soft-Robotic Sleep Aid. Timothy Wilson developed a soft-robotic sleep aid called Cuddle and Comfort Chimp. A compliant, comforting form may make robotic assistance feel less clinical, particularly when the intended function involves calm, routine and sleep. At ISEF 2025: First Award.

Hung Huynh and Kiet Nguyen (Viet Nam) — TalkiEVBot: A Robot for Children with Speech Disorders. Hung Huynh and Kiet Nguyen developed TalkiEVBot, an educational support robot for children with speech disorders. A physical robot can turn repeated practice into an interactive experience, provided the system is developed with educators and speech professionals. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Keshav Anand and Viren Bankapur (TX, USA) — GaitGuardian: Monitoring Advanced Parkinson’s Disease. Keshav Anand and Viren Bankapur developed GaitGuardian, combining real-time inertial-sensor processing, visual monitoring and machine learning for people with advanced Parkinson’s disease. Multiple sensing modes can capture different aspects of gait and help reveal changes that a single measurement may miss. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Software and AI

Amy Zhang (CO, USA) — EnAct: Visual AI Guidance for People with Vision Impairments. Amy Zhang developed EnAct, a safety-aware guidance system using multiple vision-language agents to produce actionable assistance for people with vision impairments. Its emphasis is not simply recognising an object, but turning recognition into context-sensitive and safer next steps. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Ram Sivaraman (MA, USA) — HM-Detect: AI Detection and Classification of Heart Murmurs. Ram Sivaraman developed HM-Detect, a methodology for detecting and classifying heart murmurs from multimodal signals using a novel neural-network architecture. Earlier, more consistent identification could help clinicians decide which patients need additional cardiac assessment, although medical use would require rigorous clinical validation. At ISEF 2025: First Award.

Sharl Effat and Yassin Khalaf (Kalubya, Egypt) — CO-Sign Language: Technology for More Inclusive Communication. Sharl Effat and Yassin Khalaf developed CO-Sign Language, a systems-software project focused on sign-language communication. Tools in this field may help bridge conversations between signing and non-signing people when designed with Deaf communities and linguistic accuracy at the centre. At ISEF 2025: Fourth Award. Official record gives only the title; description is MYCrave's reading.

Simran Kaur (MN, USA) — emoTune: Adaptive AI Assistance for Autistic Users. Simran Kaur developed emoTune, an AI-based assistive-technology approach for people with autism spectrum disorder. The project’s user-adaptive framing recognises that effective support cannot assume every person interprets sensory and social information in the same way. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Emma Huang and Louis Huang (MI, USA) — Multimodal AI for Detecting Deepfake Videos. Emma Huang and Louis Huang developed a deep-learning model that analyses both audio and video to improve deepfake detection. Synthetic media can leave inconsistencies across modalities, so comparing what is seen with what is heard can strengthen detection. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Jesse Rumball-Smith (Wellington, New Zealand) — A Better Backseat Driver for Road-Risk Intervention. Jesse Rumball-Smith developed a road-risk intervention approach designed to emulate human driving context and broaden access to safety assistance. Effective driving support must recognise risk without becoming so distracting or irritating that users ignore it. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Environment, water and materials

Benjamin Davis (MA, USA) — A Desktop Machine That Turns Plastic Waste into 3D-Printing Filament. Benjamin Davis designed a desktop recycling system that converts discarded PET bottles and 3D-printer purge material into reusable filament. By combining pultrusion and extrusion, he reportedly made filament production around 45% more efficient while targeting a machine cost far below commercial alternatives. At ISEF 2025: First Award; Regeneron Young Scientist Award ($75,000).

Siyaa Poddar (AZ, USA) — Colour-Changing Detectors for Silica and Uranium Dust. Siyaa Poddar created low-cost detectors for airborne silica and uranium, pollutants associated with abandoned mines and serious community health risks. Her approach stabilised colour-changing detection chemicals inside metal-organic frameworks, creating a potentially faster and more accessible way to indicate hazardous dust. At ISEF 2025: First Award; Regeneron Young Scientist Award ($75,000).

XinYan Chen (China / USA (record conflict — confirm)) — A Portable Device That Detects and Destroys Formaldehyde. XinYan Chen designed a mobile indoor-air device that does two jobs: measures trace formaldehyde and catalytically breaks it down into carbon dioxide and water. In a reported closed-box test, the prototype lowered formaldehyde concentration by almost 90% over 18 hours. At ISEF 2025: First Award; Craig R. Barrett Award for Innovation ($10,000). Location differs between the awards list (Shanghai) and the press release (San Gabriel, California).

Bennett Huang and Jason Pan (VA, USA) — AI-Guided Robotic Pest Control for Smart Agriculture. Bennett Huang and Jason Pan combined AI-guided robotics, mathematical optimisation and generative image analysis to support precision methyl-jasmonate pest control. The project aims to target plant treatment more intelligently instead of applying an input uniformly across a field. At ISEF 2025: First Award.

Sharanya Natarajan (FL, USA) — An Integrated System to Detect and Treat Water Contaminants. Sharanya Natarajan designed an integrated detection-and-delivery system for reducing contaminants in bodies of water. Linking sensing with treatment can shorten the time between discovering pollution and applying a response. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Jewan Shabi (Saudi Arabia) — Lower-Impact Refrigerants for Hydrate-Based Desalination. Jewan Shabi studied the application of low-global-warming-potential refrigerants in hydrate-based water desalination. The project recognises an important systems problem: a method intended to create freshwater should not shift excessive environmental cost into its refrigeration stage. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Areej Alqarni (Makkah, Saudi Arabia) — A Scalable Contact Liquid for Cryogenic Carbon Capture. Areej Alqarni investigated a novel contact liquid for more energy-efficient, cost-effective cryogenic carbon capture. The project tackles the interface where gas treatment, low temperature and material choice determine whether a carbon-capture method can scale. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Lamyaa Al-Nofie (Makkah Province, Saudi Arabia) — Capturing and Converting Carbon with Porous Organic Polymers. Lamyaa Al-Nofie developed an integrated approach to direct-air capture and conversion using porous organic polymers. Rather than treating captured carbon only as a waste stream, the concept considers capture and useful conversion together. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Luksina Isahaku (WI, USA) — Removing Microplastics from Riverbed Sediment with Light. Luksina Isahaku developed an in-situ approach for locating and removing microplastics from riverbed sediment using laser-induced particle fluorescence. Sediment is a difficult but critical target because pollution can accumulate below the visible water surface. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Yu Chen Guo and Yu Han Guo (British Columbia, Canada) — A Biological Photovoltaic That Also Treats Wastewater. Yu Chen Guo and Yu Han Guo developed a dual-purpose biological photovoltaic system intended to optimise both electricity output and wastewater treatment. The concept makes the treatment process itself a site for resource recovery. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Anna Podmanicka (Slovakia) — Wastewater Purification with Carbon Nitride and Low-Temperature Plasma. Anna Podmanicka explored a purification strategy combining graphitic carbon nitride and low-temperature plasma. Hybrid treatment approaches can attack contaminants through complementary physical and chemical mechanisms. At ISEF 2025: Fourth Award.

Jonathan Lai (OK, USA) — Bioplastic Products Made from Food Waste. Jonathan Lai developed sustainable bioplastic products from food waste. Converting a variable organic waste stream into a consistent material requires experimentation with formulation, processing and end-use properties. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Muhammad Airil Wafri Mohd Khairi, Muhammad Naufal Mu'az Mohd Shahneezam and Nabil Fadhil Nor Faizal (Kedah, Malaysia) — Mush N’ Pack: Mycelium-Based Packaging. Muhammad Airil Wafri Mohd Khairi, Muhammad Naufal Mu’az Mohd Shahneezam and Nabil Fadhil Nor Faizal developed a mycelium-based composite for greener packaging. Fungal mycelium can bind agricultural matter into lightweight forms, offering an alternative design language to petroleum-based protective foam. At ISEF 2025: Fourth Award.

Yumina Nishida (Kanagawa, Japan) — Algae-Based Biofuel and Fertiliser. Yumina Nishida proposed a regenerative business model using filamentous algae for biofuel and fertiliser while reducing production cost. By planning two outputs, the project examines both biological performance and commercial feasibility. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Adam Siddiqi and Vibhan Emmi (TX, USA) — Plants and Microbes Engineered to Degrade Microplastics. Adam Siddiqi and Vibhan Emmi studied the interaction of PETase expression and plant–microbe relationships in saltmarsh grass as a pathway for enhanced microplastic degradation. The project explores bioremediation as an ecological partnership rather than a single engineered organism. At ISEF 2025: Fourth Award.

Energy

Oliver Wang (VA, USA) — A Hydrogel Heat Sink for GPUs, Solar Panels and Electric Vehicles. Oliver Wang created a hybrid hydrogel–heat-sink concept aimed at improving thermal performance in high-interest applications including computing hardware, photovoltaic panels and electric vehicles. Better heat management can improve efficiency, reliability and usable life across multiple industries. At ISEF 2025: First Award.

Cho Fung Woody Tai and Tanliang Ge (Hong Kong) — A Dual-Function Catalyst for Green Hydrogen. Cho Fung Woody Tai and Tanliang Ge developed a dual-functional catalyst for green-hydrogen production. Catalyst design is central to lowering energy losses and material complexity in electrochemical hydrogen systems. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Mariam Almohaish (Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia) — Colour-Changing Coatings for Hydrogen-Leak Safety. Mariam Almohaish investigated advanced gas-chromic coatings that visibly respond to hydrogen leakage in future storage and transport infrastructure. Because hydrogen is colourless and highly flammable, early, intuitive leak indication can complement electronic safety systems. At ISEF 2025: Second Award.

Akshara Srinivas (WA, USA) — Shark-Inspired Wind-Turbine Blades. Akshara Srinivas integrated hydrodynamic features associated with a hammerhead shark into a vertical-axis wind-turbine blade design. Biomimicry can reveal geometries refined by nature and translate them into hypotheses for improving engineered flow. At ISEF 2025: Third Award.

Meghana Addanki (NJ, USA) — Electricity from Eggshell Membrane and Cotton. Meghana Addanki fabricated a piezo-triboelectric hybrid generator using a zinc-oxide-modified eggshell membrane and cotton. The work explores low-cost biomaterials as active components in energy harvesting rather than treating them only as waste. At ISEF 2025: Fourth Award.

Hanin Alhassan (Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia) — A Self-Charging Zinc-Ion Battery Made with Recycled Mortar. Hanin Alhassan developed a self-charging aqueous zinc-ion battery using calcium-vanadium-oxide nanostructures prepared from recycled mortar. The concept links construction waste recovery with safer aqueous battery research. At ISEF 2025: Fourth Award.

Agriculture and animals

Matthew Lo (PA, USA) — Training Honeybees for More Targeted Crop Pollination. Matthew Lo studied whether honeybees could be trained using synthetic mimic odours to support more targeted crop pollination, with AI-based analysis used to evaluate results. The project combines animal behaviour, agricultural need and computation in a surprising way. At ISEF 2025: First Award.

Part 3 — More young inventors (verified, outside the ranked 50)

Teenagers whose inventions we verified but who fell outside the ranked 50, usually because the work stayed a prototype. Several carry the most useful IP lessons on the whole index.

Kenneth Shinozuka (USA, 2013–14, age 14–15) — SafeWander — sock/foot pressure sensor that alerts a caregiver when a dementia patient gets out of bed. Google Science Fair 2014 Scientific American Science in Action Award; TEDYouth 2014. IP: Company SensaRx describes a 'patented OneTwist attachment'; patent number not verified.

Mallory Kievman (USA, 2010–12, age 13) — Hiccupops — apple-cider-vinegar lollipop designed to stop hiccups. Wide press coverage 2012; commercialised with UConn business students. IP: US application reported c. 2012; number/status unverified; product still sold (hiccupops.com). Misnamed 'Kieffer Macri' on at least one online list.

Sara Volz (USA, 2013, age 17) — Artificial selection of algae for high oil yield, run in a lab under her bed. Intel Science Talent Search 2013 first place (US$100,000). IP: No public IP record (research project). Mislabelled on at least one online list as a solar water purifier; it is algae biofuel research.

TJ (Tristan) Evarts (USA, 2010, age ~17) — SMARTwheel — steering-wheel cover that senses hand position to deter texting while driving. Shark Tank 2014. IP: US 8,564,424 B2, filed Dec 2010, granted Oct 2013, assignee Inventioneers Etc LLC; active to 2031.

Alissa Chavez (USA, 2011–12, age 14) — Hot Seat — child-car-seat sensor that alerts a parent who walks away with the child inside. Glamour Hometown Hero; national TV. IP: US 9,000,906 B2, granted Apr 2015, sole inventor; expired Apr 2019 for non-payment of maintenance fee; company Assila LLC.

Alaina Gassler (USA, 2018–19, age 13–14) — Camera-and-projector system that makes a car's A-pillar blind spot 'see-through'. Broadcom MASTERS 2019 Samueli Foundation Prize (US$25,000). IP: Said she hoped to patent; no filing found; similar automotive prior art exists.

Olivia Hallisey (USA, 2014–15, age 16–17) — Ebola Assay Card — silk-fibroin-stabilised paper test needing no refrigeration. Google Science Fair 2015 grand prize. IP: No public IP record; the silk-fibroin platform is patented by Tufts University.

Brittany Wenger (USA, 2011–12, age 17) — Cloud4Cancer — neural network reading breast-biopsy data. Google Science Fair 2012 grand prize; Intel STS 2013 finalist. IP: No public IP record; offered as a free web service.

Elif Bilgin (Turkey, 2011–13, age 14–16) — Bioplastic made from banana peels. Scientific American Science in Action Award 2013. IP: No public IP record; method published openly.

Hannah Herbst (USA, 2015, age 15) — BEACON — ocean-current energy probe built from recycled parts. 3M Young Scientist Challenge 2015; Forbes 30 Under 30. IP: Stated intent to open-source BEACON; adult company Golden Hour Medical cites US 12,070,229 (AutoTQ, unverified).

Robert Nay (USA, 2010, age 14) — Bubble Ball — physics puzzle game that displaced Angry Birds at No. 1. 2m downloads in two weeks; Forbes 30 Under 30 2012. IP: Nay Games LLC; no patent; trademark status unverified.

Riya Karumanchi (Canada, 2016, age 14) — SmartCane — ultrasonic obstacle-sensing white cane. Hacking Health Hamilton 2016 People's Choice. IP: No public IP record; early-stage startup. Wrongly described on at least one online list as an energy-harvesting cane.

Kshemaahna Nagi (India (Bengaluru), 2024, age 14–18) — Low-cost adsorbent device removing lead, copper and cadmium from surface runoff. Regeneron ISEF 2024 Third Award, Environmental Engineering. IP: No public IP record.

Anang Tadar (India (Arunachal Pradesh), 2016, age ~19–20 (unverified)) — G4B — ultrasonic 'goggles for the blind' that sense head-height obstacles. Dr APJ Abdul Kalam IGNITE Award 2017; Dinanath Pandey Smart Idea Award. IP: NIF reported to have helped patent G4B; no number located. Press called him a teen; sources suggest 19–20.

Part 4 — Historical and everyday inventions

Products people use without knowing a teenager started them. The ranked 50 already covers Braille, Farnsworth, Greenwood, Nissen and Pascal; these four complete the tradition.

Albert Sadacca (USA, 1917 (legend), age 15 (disputed)) — Popularised safe electric Christmas-tree string lights; co-founded NOMA Electric. Long-time NOMA chairman. IP: No patent in his name; key string-light patents belong to Haft (US 1,512,888) and Propp (US 1,596,684); NOMA formed 1925–26. Origin story disputed; earlier electric tree lights exist (Johnson 1882).

Joseph-Armand Bombardier (Canada, 1922, age 15) — First snow vehicle — Model T engine and propeller on tandem sleds; later the tracked snowmobile. Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame; National Inventors Hall of Fame 2024. IP: Canadian Patent 367,104 (1937) for the sprocket-and-track drive; later US 3,023,824; Bombardier Inc.; Ski-Doo trademark 1959.

Ralph Samuelson (USA, 1922, age 18) — Water skis — bent pine boards towed behind a boat. Water Ski Hall of Fame 1977. IP: Never patented; first US water-ski patent went to Fred Waller, US 1,559,390 (1925).

Margaret Knight (USA, c. 1850 (shuttle guard); 1868 (bag machine), age 12 (guard); 30 (machine)) — Loom shuttle safety guard at 12 (unpatented); flat-bottom paper-bag machine as an adult. National Inventors Hall of Fame 2006. IP: US 116,842 (1871) after winning a patent interference against a copier; at least 27 patents in her lifetime. The teen-era invention was never patented; the famous patent came at 30.

Part 5 — Child inventors: the under-13s usually mislabelled as teenagers

These names appear on 'teen inventor' lists online with the wrong ages. We list them with the age the record supports. Several hold real patents for work done as children, applied for with a parent's help, which is itself a useful precedent for Indian parents asking whether a minor can be named as inventor (yes).

Peyton Robertson (USA, 2013, age 11) — Sandless sandbag — salt-and-polymer fill that expands when wet and resists saltwater flooding. 3M Young Scientist Challenge 2013 (youngest winner); Forbes 30 Under 30. IP: Forbes profile says he holds five patents; numbers not verified.

Harshwardhan Zala (India (Ahmedabad), 2016–17, age 12–14) — Drone that detects and maps buried landmines (Aerobotics7, EAGLE A7). Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia; Gujarat government MoU 2017. IP: Indian patent applications reported in 2017; no number verified; company Aerobotics7. Detects and maps mines; early press overstated remote detonation.

Benjamin Franklin (USA, c. 1717, age 11) — Hand-held wooden swim fins. International Swimming Hall of Fame honorary inductee. IP: Deliberately never patented any invention.

Abbey Fleck (USA, 1993, age 8) — Makin' Bacon — microwave dish that hangs bacon so fat drips away. Good Housekeeping; still on sale. IP: US 5,552,585 (co-inventor with father), granted 1996, expired 2013; company A de F Ltd; 1997 infringement suit settled.

Cassidy Goldstein (USA, c. 2000, age 11) — Crayon holder made from a florist's water tube. IPO Education Foundation Youth Inventor of the Year 2006. IP: US 6,402,407 B1, granted 2002, sole inventor; licensed to Rand International at ~5% royalty.

KK Gregory (USA, 1994, age 10) — Wristies — fleece fingerless sleeves worn under coats. Oprah, Today Show 1998. IP: Company states patent applied for and 'Wristies' registered trademark; numbers not verified; Wristies Inc. still trading.

Robert Patch (USA, 1962–63, age 5–6) — Convertible toy truck — youngest US patentee. Commonly cited as youngest US patent holder. IP: US 3,091,888 'Toy truck', filed June 1962, granted June 1963 (expired); never commercialised.

Emma Yang (USA, 2016–18, age 12–14) — Timeless — facial-recognition app helping Alzheimer's patients recognise family. MIT Solve 2017; Women Startup Challenge 2018. IP: No public IP record; crowdfunded 2018.

Frank Epperson (USA, 1905 (legend); 1924 (patent), age 11 (legend)) — The Popsicle (originally Epsicle). Popsicle brand (now Unilever). IP: US 1,505,592 'Frozen confectionery', granted 19 Aug 1924; rights and the name later sold to the Joe Lowe Company — 'I should have protected the name'. 1905 origin story contested (SFGATE 2021).

Tenith Adithyaa (India (Tamil Nadu), 2010 onward, age 10–11 (start); 15–17 (awards)) — Banana Leaf Preservation Technology — treated leaves as plastic-free packaging. NIF IGNITE 2013; Rashtrapati Bhavan Innovator-in-Residence 2014; many self-reported international awards. IP: No patent claimed; know-how licensing model; companies Tenith Innovations / Banana Leaf Technology. Age and award list rest largely on his own websites; shelf-life claims unvalidated.

Sreelakshmi Suresh (India (Kerala), 2004–09, age 6–11) — Website design from age 6; founded eDesign and TinyLogo at 11. National Child Award for Exceptional Achievement 2008. IP: Automatic copyright only; no registered marks found. Design work, not a technical invention.

Shravan and Sanjay Kumaran (India (Chennai), 2011 onward, age 12 and 10 (start)) — GoDimensions — brothers who published ~10 apps including Emergency Booth. Speaking slots at IIM Bangalore, TEDx. IP: Automatic copyright in the apps; company registration unverified.

Names we checked and left out

An index is only as trustworthy as what it excludes. Three names that appear on online 'teen inventor' lists could not be traced to any real person or project and appear to be fabricated ("the Apeles brothers" melanoma app, "Mikhail Ilyaich" concussion mouthguard, "Roshni Bhattacharya" stethoscope). Morgan Vague's plastic-eating bacteria work is real but was done as a university undergraduate, not at 17. Sarah Buckel's locker wallpaper and Kelly Reinhart's T-Pak are widely repeated but we could not reach a primary source or patent number for either. Anonymous entries ("a team of students built...") are not listed until we have names. Tilak Mehta's Papers N Parcels is a business, not an invention, and its reported turnover figures have no published source. If you can supply a primary source for any of these, write to us and we will re-check.

What the index teaches a young inventor in India

The pattern across 133 people is consistent. Recognition is common; protection is rare; protection that survives is rarer still. Of the twenty-two granted patents, two (Param Jaggi's and Alissa Chavez's) lapsed because nobody paid a renewal fee, and both belonged to inventors who had done the hard part. Sixteen more are reported, by themselves, their companies or the press, to have filed something for which no application or patent number can be found, which often means a provisional that was never followed by a complete specification, or a filing whose number nobody published.

None of that argues that every student should file. The ISEF class shows the opposite: fifty-three serious projects, presented before any patent filing could have been published, most correctly treated as research to be published. The argument is for deciding. Before a project is shown at a fair, posted online or written up, someone should ask four questions: is there anything here that is new and not obvious, does the student want to sell or license it one day, who contributed to the inventive part, and what will the disclosure at the fair do to a later filing. In India the answers turn on Sections 2(1)(j), 3, 6, 9 and 31 of the Patents Act, 1970, and on the Indian Contract Act's rule that a minor cannot sign a binding assignment. Our ranked-50 article walks through each, and our student patent ownership guide covers who owns what when a school or college is involved.

How MYCrave helps

MYCrave Consultancy & Services runs I.N.V.E.N.T. Club, its programme for teaching students and founders to invent and to own what they invent, and has set up more than 70 IP Cells in schools and colleges. An IP Cell gives every science project the same four-step path: a prior-art search before disclosure, an invention disclosure form naming every contributor, a documented decision to file, publish or hold, and a calendar for the deadlines that follow. For an individual student with a prototype, the first step is a patentability search, not a filing; MYCrave's Registered Patent Agent then drafts and files where filing makes sense, in the right names and at the natural-person fee tier.

Request an expert assessment to run a patentability search on a student invention or to set up an IP Cell in your institution.

Frequently asked questions

Can a child or teenager be named as an inventor on an Indian patent?

Yes. Section 6 of the Patents Act, 1970 allows "any person claiming to be the true and first inventor" to apply, with no minimum age. A parent or guardian handles the paperwork and any contract, because a minor's agreement is not binding under Section 11 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872.

Are the ISEF 2025 projects patented?

We have no record of a patent for any of them as of 31 August 2026, but that is not evidence either way: applications publish 18 months after filing, so anything filed around the May 2025 fair would not show on a register before late 2026. They are research projects; several are explicitly research-stage and none is an approved medical device or commercial product.

Why are under-13 inventors in a "young innovators" index?

Because many lists online call them teenagers. We include them with the age the record supports so readers are not misled, and because several (Fleck, Goldstein, Patch, Rao) hold real patents for work done as children, while Epperson patented his childhood idea as an adult.

How were the ranked 50 chosen?

By editorial judgement on four questions: did the invention reach real users, did it survive as IP or a company, was it independently recognised by a body that checks facts, and does the inventor's method teach something. It is not a points score.

How often is the index updated?

Each time a new class of ISEF, INSPIRE-MANAK, IGNITE or Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar awardees is announced, and whenever a reader supplies a primary source we lacked. The review date at the foot of the page changes when the text does.

Where should a school start?

With a prior-art search habit and an invention disclosure form, before the science fair, not after. Our IP Cell page explains how MYCrave sets this up.

About this index

Compiled by the MYCrave Editorial Team. Reviewed by a Registered Patent Agent, MYCrave Consultancy & Services. Last reviewed: 31 August 2026. Jurisdiction: India, with international entries.

Method. Every entry was checked against primary or authoritative sources: patent registers (Google Patents, Justia, NIF India), award-body records (Society for Science/ISEF full-awards release, 3M Young Scientist Challenge, Earthshot Prize, PIB and News on AIR for PMRBP, Google Science Fair archives), institutional pages and, for context, major press. Ages are ranges where sources disagree. Performance figures for ISEF projects are quoted from the Society for Science press releases with their original hedges. Quotations appear only on profile pages, and only where a source URL was verified.

Images. Illustrations are AI-generated depictions of inventions, labelled as such. Photographs appear only on profile pages, only under a verified licence (Wikimedia Commons, Open Government Licence, public domain) or written permission, with the credit line the licence requires.

Corrections. Write to the address on our contact page with the entry name and the source you believe we have missed.

Disclaimer. This index is general information about intellectual property law and history, not legal advice. Whether a specific invention can be protected depends on facts we do not have.

Related MYCrave guides

• 50 Teenage Inventors and Their Innovations: India and the World, Ranked
• Who owns a patent from student research: the student and the institution
• Can software and AI be patented in India? Section 3(k) explained
• Patent renewal fees in India: the schedule, and what happens if you miss one