Invention Notebook

Latest

Mahadevan poses with The Allergent, a food allergy detection device.

The Food Allergy Detective

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

February 25, 2025

7 min read

Inventing Our Future: A National Inventors’ Day Celebration

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

February 9, 2025

5 min read

Envisioning a Safer Eye Exam

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

January 31, 2025

4 min read

A Champion for Sustainability

Transforming Engineering Curricula to Protect Our Planet

December 18, 2024

7 min read

Making STEM Education More Inclusive for Emerging Entrepreneurs

Five attributes that innovation and entrepreneurship programs should cultivate

October 31, 2024

6 min read

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. But as you watchedMore

July 17, 2024

9 min read

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 aMore

June 25, 2024

11 min read

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

June 3, 2024

9 min read

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 they areMore

April 26, 2024

11 min read

Previous

  • Inventing for One Planet

    Inventing for One Planet

    Too often the tenets of environmental responsibility are absent from the invention process itself. As we commemorate Earth Day each year, we become more cognizant that the Earth itself is a constrained resource. Sustainability is one of the key issues of our time, but when it comes to inventing new products, we often don’t act…

  • Students should be forging paths, not following them

    Students should be forging paths, not following them

    Before winter break, I had the privilege to sit in on a new class at that was launched by TIE Oregon as part of the TIE Young Entrepreneurs program. The course teaches the principles of invention and entrepreneurship by guiding the students through real-world problem identification, brainstorming and prototyping solutions, and planning businessesMore