January 2013

Open Minds 2013

Open Minds Home | Video Competition | Video Judging Panel

Thank you for a great Open Minds event!

Open Minds is the acclaimed annual exhibition of cutting-edge innovation from NCIIA's best student teams. The exhibition takes place each year during NCIIA's annual conference, and is an opportunity for student teams to demonstrate their products/companies to the public, many of them for the first time.

Open Minds 2013 teams showcased their products during two exhibitions, held at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, hosted by its Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. The team from Thomas Jefferson High School won the People's Choice award, earning $1,500. Congratulations!

CleanNG LLC
Oklahoma State University
A new natural gas fuel storage system that allows more fuel to be stored in a smaller space.
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Ligadon
University of Utah
A more effective solution for ligament and tendon recombination surgeries that prevents tissue from tearing under strain.
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HESE Affordable Greenhouses
Pennsylvania State University
Affordable, easy-to-build greenhouse kits designed for small farmers in Africa.
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Assured Safety Drill
Harvard University
A handheld, portable, and reliably safe drilling device that can create holes in the skull with any size drill bit.
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FastStitch
Johns Hopkins University
A device developed by Archon Medical Technologies that helps surgeons close the wound created by open abdominal surgery more safely, easily, and consistently.
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Engineering2Empower
University of Notre Dame
A safe, affordable, permanent housing solution for the developing world consisting of lightweight, earthquake- and hurricane-resistant concrete panels.
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AssureFit Chest Tube Stabilization Device
Clemson University
A device designed to increase stability and reduce the risk of dislodgment for chest tube insertions.
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mSurvey
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A platform for using text-messaging technology to survey communities in developing countries via mobile phones.
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Serionix
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
An economical and efficient way of removing perchlorate from water in point-of-use treatment units such as pitchers or faucet filters.
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MaxQ LLC
Oklahoma State University
A series of multi-use, lightweight, insulated shipping containers with much larger maximum usable volume, higher insulation rating and higher impact resistance than current containers.
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MAID (Magnetically Assisted Intubation Device)
Georgia Institute of Technology
A device that simplifies the intubation procedure by using a system of magnets to guide the endotracheal tube into the trachea.
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Project Gado
Johns Hopkins University
An inexpensive archival scanning robot that can automatically lift fragile images, place them on a scanner, and scan them into a database at full archival-quality resolution.
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Sanergy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A micro-franchised network of low-cost sanitation centers designed specifically for urban slums.
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Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology InvenTeam
A Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam
A high school student team working to develop an emotive aid for combating autism
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