14-year-old earns $25,000 for origami pattern that can hold 10,000 times its own weight

At just 14 years old, New York City teenager Miles Wu has earned a $25,000 award for a groundbreaking project blending origami with physics. His research focused on the Miura-ori fold, an origami pattern recognized for its precise ability to collapse and expand, and explored its potential in improving deployable structures for emergency situations.

Wu, who has been folding origami for over six years, mostly creating animals and insects, has recently begun designing original patterns. For his winning project at the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge in October 2025, he investigated how the Miura-ori fold could optimize the strength-to-weight ratio of emergency structures.

The project involved extensive testing. Wu experimented with various parallelogram dimensions and angles across different paper types, ultimately performing 108 trials on 54 hand-folded variations. By gradually adding weight until each fold collapsed, he discovered that Miura-ori folds could support remarkably heavy loads. In fact, the strongest fold held over 10,000 times its own weight, which Wu compared to a New York City taxi carrying over 4,000 elephants.

Wu was inspired by natural disasters, including the 2024 Hurricane Helene and California wildfires, and by applications of origami in STEM fields like medicine. He noted the limitations of current emergency structures, such as tents, which often cannot simultaneously be strong, compact, and easy to deploy. His findings suggest that Miura-ori folds may offer a solution.

The Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge is highly competitive. Middle school applicants compete at local science fairs, with only the top 10% being nominated for national consideration. Of roughly 2,000 applicants, 30 finalists travel to Washington, D.C., where they present their projects and participate in additional challenges. Society for Science president Maya Ajmera praised Wu not only for his exceptional project but also for his leadership and problem-solving skills during these challenges.

Looking ahead, Wu and his family plan to invest his $25,000 prize toward his higher education. He hopes to prototype a Miura-ori-based emergency shelter and continue exploring origami applications in various fields.

Analysis: The Potential of Origami in Emergency Solutions

At just 14 years old, Miles Wu's innovative project has drawn attention to an exciting intersection of art and science. By combining origami with physics, Wu has demonstrated that ancient paper-folding techniques can offer practical solutions to modern challenges. His research on the Miura-ori fold, which has the ability to expand and collapse with incredible precision, could revolutionize how we design emergency structures for disaster relief.

Wu’s detailed experimentation, which involved 108 trials across different paper types and dimensions, revealed the Miura-ori fold’s impressive strength-to-weight ratio. The fold’s ability to bear more than 10,000 times its own weight proves that it could support structures capable of withstanding heavy loads in emergencies. This is a major breakthrough, particularly when compared to conventional materials used in temporary shelters that often fall short in terms of durability, portability, and ease of deployment.

The young innovator’s work is particularly relevant in the context of natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires, where the need for quickly deployable and resilient emergency shelters is paramount. Traditional tents and shelters often fail to meet these criteria. Wu’s approach suggests a future where origami-inspired designs could be used to create lightweight, compact, and durable structures in a fraction of the time required for conventional solutions.

As Wu plans to further develop his research, his success highlights the growing importance of cross-disciplinary approaches in STEM. By merging creativity with scientific inquiry, Wu has shown that even something as seemingly simple as origami can have profound real-world applications. His future work could lead to more efficient and effective emergency response strategies, providing hope for faster recovery in disaster-stricken areas.

Sources:

• A 14-year-old won $25,000 for origami. He discovered a pattern that can hold 10,000 times its own weight, he says.