Meet Our 2025 CIC Graduate Winners

Since 1990, the Collegiate Inventors Competition^® (CIC) has rewarded our nation’s most creative and innovative college students.

The 2025 competition was held Oct. 15-16 at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. Finalists presented their inventions to Judges including National Inventors Hall of Fame^® Inductees and patent experts, gaining expert feedback and encouragement while competing for cash prizes and patent acceleration.

Congratulations to Our 2025 CIC Graduate Winners and People’s Choice Winner!

Our Graduate Winners are Weixin Guan and Yaxuan Zhao, inventors of AirGel, representing the University of Texas at Austin!

AirGel is a sustainable drinking water solution. Right now, as many as two-thirds of people are experiencing water scarcity worldwide, and as the population grows and freshwater supplies decrease, sustainable ways to increase the planet’s water supply will become more crucial. AirGel introduces an innovative, cost-effective way to extract drinking water from humidity in the air anytime, anywhere. It’s a gel-based, solar atmospheric water harvesting device that combines hydrogel sorbents made from biomass sources (like food scraps or forestry byproducts) with a portable collection device. It requires minimal power and delivers off-grid access while reducing reliance on energy-intensive, centralized infrastructure.

As our Graduate Winners, Guan and Zhao received a cash prize of $10,000 and a USPTO Patent Acceleration Certificate.

Team AirGel also was named the winner of the 2025 People’s Choice Award! Determine by nationwide public voting, this award earned the team an additional $2,000.

“Water scarcity is immediate and personal to me. I wanted to work on a solution that is reliable off-grid, affordable to make and easy to use,” Guan said. “I entered CIC to put a practical solution to a huge problem in front of people who care about real-world impact.”

“By participating in CIC, I hope to highlight how scientific innovation can potentially translate into tangible benefits for people and the environment,” Zhao said. “Looking ahead, we expect AirGel to inspire new standards for energy use, cost and portability, and to catalyze collaborations with emergency agencies and local manufacturers to bring decentralized water to where it is needed most.”

Congratulations to Our 2025 CIC Graduate Runners-Up!

Representing Cornell University, our Graduate Runners-Up are Jacob Belding and Ava Forystek, the inventors behind RedAlert Living Sensors!

This team’s invention introduces a vivid new idea for smarter fertilizer use. Nitrogen promotes rapid plant growth and higher crop yields, but current techniques for evaluating nitrogen availability can fail to provide precise and timely information. To easily indicate nitrogen deficiency, RedAlert Living Sensor plants are genetically modified to produce a plant pigment in a vivid red color. This helps farmers quickly recognize deficiencies and apply nitrogen fertilizer only as needed, reducing chemical waste and benefiting agriculture and the environment.

As our Graduate Runners-Up, Belding and Forystek received a $5,000 cash prize to advance their innovative journey.

“My adviser initially suggested CIC to me, and when I checked out the website and saw it was the same organization that offered Camp Invention^®, which I participated in as a kid, I knew I definitely wanted to apply,” Belding said. “I wanted to enter CIC not only to promote the exciting technology I have been developing during my Ph.D. program, but also to get a chance to meet a community of like-minded innovators face-to-face.”

“I’m very excited about the science and technology behind RedAlert, and being a part of CIC helps me to have a platform to share it with the world,” Forystek said. “I think that this invention has the potential to have a massive impact on agriculture, plant sciences and the world, so it’s important to me to spread the news that it exists!”

Who Are Our 2025 CIC Undergraduate Winners?

Find out who won our Undergraduate competition by checking out our blog, and learn more about CIC by visiting our website.