Origami-inspired design by 14-year-old supports 10,000× its own mass

A 14-year-old student from New York City, Miles Wu, won a USD 25,000 prize at the Thermo Fisher Scientific ASCEND Award in October 2025 for creating an origami design based on the Miura-ori fold that can support over 10,000 times its own weight. Wu tested 54 variations of the Miura-ori fold—altering parallelogram heights, widths, fold angles, and paper weights—and found that smaller panels with steeper angles offered the greatest strength and resilience. Surprisingly, standard copy paper outperformed heavier cardstock in strength-to-weight ratio. His strongest design could theoretically hold the equivalent weight of a New York City taxi cab supporting over 4,000 elephants. Inspired by a six-year passion for origami, Wu aims to apply his findings to develop lightweight, deployable shelters for disaster relief. His project involved rigorous testing, including using 50-pound exercise weights to measure load capacity accurately. Selected from nearly 2,000 applicants