Thermo Fisher JIC 2025 Awards Ceremony

The Thermo Fisher Junior Innovators Challenge award ceremony was held on October 28, 2025. The Thermo Fisher Junior Innovators Challenge is the nation’s leading middle school science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competition. The Thermo Fisher JIC, a program of Society for Science, reaches 60,000 middle school students nationwide, inspiring them to pursue their STEM interests and explore exciting college and career paths. The 30 finalists, who were selected from nearly 2,000 applicants representing 48 states, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico; are counted among the nation’s brightest students, with several, including Miles, collectively receiving more than $100,000 at tonight’s award ceremony in Washington, D.C. Winners were chosen by a panel of distinguished scientists, engineers and educators and the finalists’ schools also received a $1,000 grant to support STEM programming.

Miles Wu, 14, from New York City, won the $25,000 Thermo Fisher Scientific ASCEND (Aspiring Scientists Cultivating Exciting New Discoveries) Award, the top prize in the competition.

Exploring the power of origami-inspired engineering, Miles tested 54 variations of the Miura-ori fold, a geometric pattern that packs flat and unfolds in one smooth motion. His research revealed that designs with smaller panels and steeper angles weren’t just stronger, they were remarkably resilient. Using dumbbells, he discovered they could support more than 9,000 times their own weight. Miles hopes to apply these insights to develop strong, lightweight shelters that can be rapidly deployed in areas affected by natural disasters.

The other top winners included:

Akhil Nagori, 15, from Santa Clara, CA, won the $10,000 Broadcom Coding with Commitment ® Award for combining STEM learning with coding to solve a community problem they care about that aligns with the 17 Sustainable Development Goal of the United Nations. For his project, Akhil worked as part of a team to develop an inexpensive pair of glasses that can translate text to speech, to help visually impaired students have wide access to reading materials.

Peter Fernández Dulay, 15 from Jacksonville, FL, won the $10,000 DoD STEM Talent Award for demonstrating excellence in science, technology, engineering or math; along with the leadership and technical skills necessary to excel in the 21st Century STEM workforce and build a better community for tomorrow. Peter had four image-generating AI platforms make images of five different types of scientists and found that because the AI tools learned from limited data, the tools perpetuated stereotypes about male bias in science.

Evann Sun, 14, from Santa Clara, CA, won The Lemelson Foundation Award for Invention of $10,000, which is given to a young inventor creating promising product-based solutions to real-world problems. Evann worked as part of a team to develop a pair of glasses that can translate text to speech, to help visually impaired students have wide access to reading materials.

Camila Isabel Gonzalez-Thompson, 14, from Ponce, Puerto Rico, won the $10,000 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award for Health Advancement, which recognizes the student whose work and performance shows the most promise in health-related fields and demonstrates an understanding of the many social factors that affect health. Camila examined blood samples from Puerto Ricans for antibodies to dengue virus, and showed that the virus is endemic to Puerto Rico, helping public health officials target interventions.

Learn more the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge: https://www.societyforscience.org/jic/

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