Announcing Our 2025 CIC Undergraduate Winners

On Oct. 15-16 at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, the most innovative college students from across the country presented their cutting-edge inventions.

Since 1990, the Collegiate Inventors Competition^® (CIC) has provided student inventors with opportunities to present their inspiring work to Judges including National Inventors Hall of Fame^® Inductees and patent experts. These young inventors gain valuable insight while competing for cash prizes to fuel their progress.

Congratulations to Our 2025 CIC Undergraduate Winners!

Representing Washington University in St. Louis, our Undergraduate Winners are Myles (Max) Miller, Nicolas Chicoine and Cameron Freeman, who invented Sense.

This invention offers a smart new way to avoid allergens! Food allergies are common and dangerous — in fact, in the U.S., someone comes into an emergency room every six minutes with food-based anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction. Designed to help people avoid exposure to allergens that could endanger them, the Selective Electronic peaNut Sensing Entity (Sense) is a portable device that detects latent peanut presence in foods. When you hover the device over food, in less than one minute, Sense scans a whole dish for peanut presence and displays results on a smartphone app.

As our Undergraduate Winners, the Sense team received a cash prize of $10,000 and a USPTO Patent Acceleration Certificate.

In speaking about the team’s motivation to enter the competition, Freeman noted “the prestige and honor of being a part of an organization of this caliber, the opportunity to connect with smart and like-minded people, and the ability to learn from incredible colleagues and Hall of Fame members.”

“I decided a long time ago that I would be committing my life to making the world a stronger, fairer place for all people, and innovation is a refreshing, rewarding way of making that happen,” Miller shared. “CIC affords the unique opportunity for Sense to gain traction, get Hall of Fame-level feedback, lock down intellectual property rights, and orient our focus to continue developing a device that can save countless lives and advance human health. CIC affords Sense, even as a preliminary prototype, a platform to blossom substantially.”

“There are two main things we hope this invention changes for people with allergies,” Chicoine explained. “First is the ability of the device to prevent accidental allergen ingestion through detection at an industrial and individual level. The other is to restore the ability to engage socially. The hope is that a consumer could discreetly use the device to have peace of mind in trying new restaurants, going to events and living life unrestrained by allergy.”

Congratulations to Our 2025 CIC Undergraduate Runner-Up!

Our Undergraduate Runner-Up is the inventor of BiliRoo: Daniel John of Calvin University!

BiliRoo is designed to provide better care for infants. Globally,​ 60% of full-term babies and 80% of premature babies develop jaundice — one of the leading causes of preventable infant disability and mortality worldwide. More than 6 million infants lack access to ​the necessary phototherapy treatment due to sporadic electricity and high equipment costs. BiliRoo is a patent-pending, easy-to-use, low-cost, nonelectric medical device designed to treat infant jaundice in limited-resource settings. ​It’s a wearable infant sling that combines filtered sunlight phototherapy and “kangaroo care” (skin-to-skin contact)​ to enable parental involvement and potential at-home use.

John brought home a $5,000 cash prize to advance his innovative journey.

“As I’ve developed BiliRoo, many of the startups I looked up to were winners of CIC,” John shared. “I was excited by the support CIC provides student innovators and the impact CIC has had and continues to have in the world.”

In describing what motivates him as an innovator, John said, “The infants who will hopefully receive BiliRoo one day are my motivation. BiliRoo could have a large-scale impact globally, preventing brain damage by treating infants with severe jaundice. Every year, over 6 million infants lack access to this critical treatment, and BiliRoo has the potential to meet this need.”

Who Are Our 2025 CIC Graduate Winners?

Learn about our Graduate Winners by checking out our blog, and find out more about CIC by visiting our website.