Miles Wu
Miles Wu, 14, started practicing origami as a hobby about six years ago
Miles Wu, 14, turned ancient paper folding techniques into a potential solution for disaster situations, winning the main national science prize for primary school students.
The young man Miles Wua 9th grader at Hunter College High School in New York, discovered that versatile origami could be the key to solving a crucial challenge in emergency response.
After spending more than 250 hours double and meticulously testing the paper, the 14-year-old discovered that a variant of the origami pattern Many times can bear 10,000 times its own weight — the equivalent of carrying 4,000 elephants in a light vehicle.
Just recently, ZAP reported that the Ori had resorted to Miura-ori to and create an innovative folding umbrella.
Wu’s pioneering research won him first prize in the 2025 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge, the country’s premier competition for elementary school students, organized by Society for Science.
The young inventor I have been practicing origami as a hobby for 6 yearsbut your scientific exploration began in 2024when he began a study on how geometric paper folding could be applied to real world problems.
His inspiration was consolidated when the Hurricane Helene hit Florida and wildfires ravaged Southern California. “I thought maybe these origami patterns, which are resistant and foldablecould be used as emergency shelters in these natural disasters — something like a tent“, explains Wu.
The teenager focused on the Miura-ori fold, named after the Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miuratells .
This mosaic parallelogram pattern, which became famous for its use in spacecraft solar panels since the 1990s, it can bend or unfold in a single smooth movementand compress large sheets into remarkably flat, compact shapes.
Wu realized that existing emergency shelters were typically robust, easy to assemble, or cost-effective — but rarely do all three things at the same time.
To test his hypothesis, Wu turned the family’s living room into a laboratory. Created 54 different Miura-ori variants using computer design software, varying the height, width and angles of the parallelograms.
Then, fold two copies of each design using three types of paper — photocopy paper, light cardboard and heavy cardboard — and carried out 108 tests. Using a creasing machine to ensure accuracy, he tested each 64-square-inch pattern by placing it between guardrails and adding weights until it collapsed.
Wu expected the patterns to only support around 20 kg, Wu was shocked when they supported up to 90 kg.
The president and executive director of the Society for Science, Maya Ajmera, was full of praise for Wu for transforming “a lifelong passion for origami in a structural engineering project truly rigorous“.
The judges were particularly impressed with his creativity during the team challenges, where he applied origami principles to build components of a movable crab arm.
Glaucio H. Paulinoan engineer at Princeton University, praised Wu’s “excellent parametric exploration,” while noting that scaling up to full-size shelters would require facing challenges such as thicker materials, joint design and responses to multidirectional loads.
Undaunted by these challenges, Wu now plans to develop a full-size prototype. “I definitely want to continue exploring and investigating. This achievement It’s just the beginning of my scientific journey“.
