Impact Spotlights

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  • How Building Skateboards Inspired One Young Woman to Become a Prizewinning Inventor and a Role Model for Young Women in STEM

    How Building Skateboards Inspired One Young Woman to Become a Prizewinning Inventor and a Role Model for Young Women in STEM

    From a family of Vietnamese refugees and the only girl in her college physics program, Kayla Nguyen has overcome her share of obstacles. Now she’s working to encourage other women and girls interested in science. “Inventions and physics are all around us,” says Kayla Nguyen. Now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,…

  • Invention for All

    Invention for All

    Global challenges are stacking up around us, from new emergencies like COVID-19 to existing issues like climate change. We are already seeing dramatic repercussions for our economy, our lives and our livelihoods. In the latest article in Invention Notebook, Foundation Executive Director Carol Dahl examines the role that invention and inventors can play to help…

  • How To Keep Kids Inspired During Quarantine

    How To Keep Kids Inspired During Quarantine

    “STEM-thusiast” Nate Ball Recommends Shifting Gears and Thinking Like an Inventor As pandemic life persists, millions of parents are facing the same daily dilemma: How to keep kids engaged and inspired in a time when so much of the world is off-limits. For inventor and father of two Nate Ball, the solution involves equal parts…

  • What Tomorrow’s Innovators Need Today

    What Tomorrow’s Innovators Need Today

    By Phil Weilerstein Phil Weilerstein is the President of VentureWell The global coronavirus crisis has served to underscore the vital role innovation now plays in our economic and social lives. In the face of this novel threat, we have come to assume and even expect rapid scientific solutions—new tests, vaccines, devices, treatments. It’s an expectation…

  • Converting a Classic Car into a Zero-Carbon Ride

    Converting a Classic Car into a Zero-Carbon Ride

    This college student is tackling climate change by making eco-friendly cars more affordable.

  • During a Health Crisis, Look for the Inventors

    During a Health Crisis, Look for the Inventors

    It was a deadly pathogen that turned Jason Kang and his friends into inventors. But it’s not the one you’re thinking of. In 2014, Ebola was ravaging West Africa. Kang was a junior at Columbia University at the time. Like many other people, he wanted to help but felt there was little he could do.…

  • Invention Roundup: Inventors Rally in Response to a Health Crisis

    Invention Roundup: Inventors Rally in Response to a Health Crisis

    New products and devices address COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic is igniting a flurry of invention to address urgent issues of prevention and detection and treatment. From multiple efforts to address the need for ventilators to open-source face shields to drones that can detect potential respiratory infection, university researchers, engineers and private entrepreneurs have stepped…

  • Growing Global Invention Ecosystems to Solve Our Sustainable Development Challenges

    Growing Global Invention Ecosystems to Solve Our Sustainable Development Challenges

    By Maggie Flanagan, The Lemelson Foundation Program Officer For Global Entrepreneurship Week, millions of people across 170 countries participated in thousands of online events and in-person gatherings to discuss the state-of-the-state of global entrepreneurship, as well as what’s needed to grow entrepreneurial opportunity in the years ahead. One of the key themes for this year’s…

  • Starting Small and Dreaming Big: Profile of Broadcom MASTERS’ 2018 Lemelson Invention Prize Winner

    Starting Small and Dreaming Big: Profile of Broadcom MASTERS’ 2018 Lemelson Invention Prize Winner

    A profile of John Madland, Broadcom MASTERS’ 2018 Lemelson Invention Prize Winner Fifteen-year-old John Madland has always had an inventive curiosity. Growing up, he would ask for broken appliances as birthday gifts so that he could fix them. “I rarely give up on an idea,” he says. “Even if it takes several years to, I’ll…

  • NEST360° Initiative Harnesses Invention to Solve Global Health Challenges

    NEST360° Initiative Harnesses Invention to Solve Global Health Challenges

    The Lemelson Foundation is proud to announce our contribution to the launch of NEST360°, a new multi-organization partnership aimed at making a lasting impact on maternal and newborn health in low-resource settings. Current data shows that around 28 in every 1,000 babies in Sub-Saharan Africa die in the first month of life. The NEST360° initiative…

  • Nearly 2,000 Additional Educators Embrace Invention Education

    Nearly 2,000 Additional Educators Embrace Invention Education

    While September is when the public focuses on going back to school, every teacher knows that the real work happens before that – preparing classrooms, planning lessons and participating in professional development. When it comes to Invention Education, thousands of educators have participated in professional development programs this year with the goal of integrating new…

  • Teachers Who Inspire Students to Invent Can Transform Lives

    Teachers Who Inspire Students to Invent Can Transform Lives

    When teachers present their students with real-world challenges to solve, they show them that they have the power to improve lives in their community and beyond. For National Teacher Appreciation Week, we’re celebrating teachers who are inspiring their students through invention education. Clara Mabour was a student in Oakland Park, Florida, when she met a…