Teen’s origami testing reveals ultra-strong fold for flat-pack disaster shelters
Miles Wu, 14, of New York, tested 54 variations of the Miura-ori origami crease pattern by stacking weights on folded sheets until they failed. He found that certain designs with smaller panels and steeper creases are dramatically stronger, with the top-performing fold withstanding more than 9,000 times its own weight and enabling a path toward flat-pack disaster shelters. He won the $25,000 top prize in the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge, highlighting origami engineering as a practical tool for rapid, scalable shelter design.