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Invent for the Planet

Stay tuned for Invent for the Planet 2024.

2023 Global Winners

First Place

Swansea University's Team H2Grow created a multi-way filtration system that relies on reverse osmosis technology to clean contaminated water into usable water.

Second Place

Team FinDiesel from Habib University have employed blue bio-economy strategies to harvest fish waste to create biofuel. This fuel can be recycled back into communities.

Third Place

Team Eco-Energizers from Texas A&M University at Qatar designed "SolarPath," a self-healing technology with high-impact concentrators that repair any micro-cracks in solar panels. This technology allows solar panels to work for 25-30 years.

2022 Global Winners

First Place

Group of students holding up a big check for 1st place.

Aquabox from Texas A&M University has developed an easy-to-use, affordable solution to help increase food production for developing countries. The team's digitized aquaculture monitoring system will also decrease the number of pesticides and fertilizers used to farm fish and crops. 

Second Place

Group of students holding up a big check for 2nd place.

New Mexico State University's team E^2M3 created small-scale, renewable energy sources. The team developed an interactive art installation — EcoArt — to imitate a punching bag that can be hit, hugged or pulled to conduct electricity and store it within a battery bank for later use.

Third Place

Group of students holding up a big check for 3rd place.

Team Island Vision from Texas A&M Corpus Christi is using ultrasonic sensors to detect the proximity of objects to a visually impaired individual. The team's innovation, Hero 1.0, is an automated robot that uses line tracking to guide children along preset paths to get to specific locations. It has a proximity sensor that tracks objects 4 feet in front of it and a pole for children to grasp as they are being guided.

Read the story about 2022 Global Winners!

2020 Global Winners

  • First place: Corais - Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica Celso Suckow da Fonseca and Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Roughly 37% of microplastics found in the world’s oceans are derived from personal care products and synthetic textiles like clothing, expelled in the wastewater from washing machines. Team Corais developed an easy-to-use filter containing magnetite, a recyclable metal, which attracts microplastics and prevents them from being released into waterways.
  • Second place: ECOtory - Texas A&M: ECOtory created a sustainable inventory app that allows airlines to better gauge passenger needs in advance. This would then integrate with their inventory systems, reducing excess weight and airline waste, and thus reducing fuel consumption and the contribution to greenhouse gases. Passengers are incentivized with the ability to exchange unwanted meals and amenities for airline miles.
  • Third place: Hya Bioplastics - Makerere University, Uganda: The Hya Bioplastics team aimed to solve two environmental issues at once. Their innovation would eliminate single-use, oil-derived plastics through a biodegradable alternative made from water hyacinths, an invasive aquatic weed in the waterways of Uganda. By clearing the lakes of these invasive aquatic weeds to produce the packaging, this design would address multiple local and global problems.
Read the Story About the Competition

2019 Winners

Team Tupa

The IFTP 2019 first-place team from Brazil developed an innovative prototype to help assist and improve the quality of life for the visually impaired by helping them navigate while walking, replacing a cane.

Read more about Team Tupa.

2018 Winners

Team EDU-Lite

The IFTP 2018 winners are a collaborative team from Texas A&M and the University of Technology in Yatanarpon, Cyber City, Myanmar. They designed a device to bring light to children around the world that are unable to study at night because they don't have access to electricity.

Read more about Team EDU-Lite.