Invention Notebook

Latest

  • The Food Allergy Detective

    The Food Allergy Detective

    This young inventor created an AI-enabled, electronic nose to sniff out allergens lurking in your food.

  • Inventing Our Future: A National Inventors’ Day Celebration

    Inventing Our Future: A National Inventors’ Day Celebration

    A message from Rob Schneider, Executive Director, The Lemelson Foundation

  • Envisioning a Safer Eye Exam

    Envisioning a Safer Eye Exam

    This young inventor created a synthetic model eye to help medical students train for optical procedures.

  • A Champion for Sustainability

    A Champion for Sustainability

    Transforming Engineering Curricula to Protect Our Planet

  • Making STEM Education More Inclusive for Emerging Entrepreneurs

    Making STEM Education More Inclusive for Emerging Entrepreneurs

    Five attributes that innovation and entrepreneurship programs should cultivate

  • Escaping the Ordinary in the Classroom

    Escaping the Ordinary in the Classroom

    Grant Kightlinger and Molly Grace, co-creators of the “FairPlay Challenge.” This innovative education curriculum uses an escape room model to engage students in important life lessons. Many of us have had that experience in school of feeling trapped in a boring lesson about a topic that didn’t seem to have any relevance to our lives.…

  • Making Engineering Elementary

    Making Engineering Elementary

    How a model for equity-oriented engineering curriculum is engaging students from all backgrounds and in the earliest grades Students engineering windmills that harness the wind’s energy. (Credit: Youth Engineering Solutions, Museum of Science, Boston) Engineers are crucial to building our future. And to harness the best solutions for tomorrow’s social and environmental challenges, we need…

  • Transforming the Game with Invention

    Transforming the Game with Invention

    Shawn Springs, CEO of Windpact. This former athlete turned entrepreneur and inventor is creating new sports technology to improve player safety. Who can be an inventor? A dynamic new exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation is posing that question through a unique lens, andMore

  • Recharging the Electric Vehicle Industry

    Recharging the Electric Vehicle Industry

    Siblings Steven (left) and Zora Chung (right) co-founded technology company ReJoule. This sustainable startup is building a circular economy for EV batteries from the ground up How do you make a critically important sustainable industry even more sustainable? For electric vehicles, one of the challenges is the sustainable source itself — the lithium-ion battery. Although…

  • Paving the Way to Sustainability

    Paving the Way to Sustainability

    Removing roadblocks for low-carbon building materials can spur innovation and lower greenhouse gas emissions

  • Teaching Beyond Textbooks

    Teaching Beyond Textbooks

    Rethinking Education for a World Fueled by Creativity and Innovation

  • Achieving that Lightbulb Moment

    Achieving that Lightbulb Moment

    How two high school inventors created a flashlight to help light the way for their community’s first responders

  • Engineering for One Planet: A Paradigm Shift for Climate Action and a Sustainable Future

    Engineering for One Planet: A Paradigm Shift for Climate Action and a Sustainable Future

    World Engineering Day prompts crucial questions: Can the very ingenuity that defines engineering — the force that builds our world’s cities and puts a world of knowledge in our hands — help pave the path towards a truly sustainable future? Can it become an instrument not just for technological progress, but also for the thriving of our planet and…