U.S. HIGH SCHOOL CHALLENGE 2024-2025

Problem Background

For high school students, the year 2050 will be significant as the middle of this century, but also when many of us are in our 40s, deeply engaged in work, family matters, and life pursuits. We will be leaders in a world—assuming that many experts can be believed—that will be very different. It will be our responsibility to design and implement new ways to manage those changes.

By 2050, climate scientists anticipate that hurricanes and storms will be much more intense and cover a greater area of impact. Due to rising sea levels, rising water temperatures, and these more intense storms, many believe that we will experience increased and more damaging flooding, on the coasts and inland. The impacts will bring damage to homes and buildings, hurt many public lands and infrastructure, and kill or otherwise harm many people, unless we find ways to manage, mitigate, and respond to the threats from these hurricanes and storms.

The Challenge

The second annual Design Our Future U.S. High School Challenge for school year 2024-2025 invites high school students to submit solutions in two categories – (1) engineering and architecture and (2) medicine and technology – focused on problems that will help us to make sure these hurricanes and storms will not impact us and our communities as much in the future as the experts think.

Details on the topics for the challenge follow. Additional information on the problem and each topic can be found on our Resources page.

Engineering & Architecture Topic: Preventing Flooding

Given the risk of damage from increased flooding based on hurricanes and storms, our first challenge topic seeks innovative solution concepts to manage and mitigate the resulting inland or coastal flooding. For this topic, we ask you to think more creatively in your designs than simply building a floodwall. Since our future is about sustainability, we would love to see solutions that include sustainable materials or that have some positive environmental features. Also, we want to see how your designs relate to your community. So, we want to hear not just about your design and how it will help manage or mitigate flooding, but about your community and how your design will have benefits for your community!

Medicine & Technology Topic: Public Health Response

Unfortunately, in many instances, hurricanes, storms, and flooding, human lives are put in danger and, sadly, some lives are lost. To mitigate the risk of these natural disasters resulting in deaths, emergency responses and public health management practices must enhance. New technologies from drones to unmanned surface vehicles and from artificial intelligence to precision medicine offer opportunities to increase the response to hurricanes, storms, and flooding. Again, with this topic, we want to see how your designs relate to your community. So, we want to hear not just about your design and how it will help with public health response activities in your community that are required by flooding or other storm damage, but about your community and how your design will have benefits for your community!

Participation

The Design Our Future U.S. High School Fall 2023 Challenge is open to all teens ages 13 through 19 who are high school students in grades 9 through 12, or who are homeschooled students working toward a high school degree anywhere in the United States. You can enter as an individual or as a team of up to five people; however, you may only make one submission, as either an individual or as part of a team. Please see the Rules for additional information and conditions for eligibility.

Submissions & Submission Deadline (APRIL 18, 2025 - 11:59 PM)

All Submissions should be emailed to [email protected]. Submissions must be received by 11:59 PM (Eastern Time) on Friday, April 18, 2025.

Evaluation & Evaluation Criteria

The submissions will be evaluated by a panel of public service leaders, management consultants, and technologists with experience in fields relevant to the challenge topics to determine the award winners.

Submissions will be judged based on their adherence to the Entry requirements, Rules, and the Challenge topics. Specific evaluation criteria include:

Solution Potential – How viable is the solution concept design to address the challenge topic(s)?
Creativity – How innovative and original is the solution concept design?
Community Impact – How does the design propose to positively impact the community of the submitting student(s)?
Communication – How strong is the explanation of the solution design concept (both in terms of the messaging and quality?
Long-Term Potential – Beyond the applicability of the solution design concept for the community of the submitting student(s), what is the potential for wide-scale use of the solution concept throughout the U.S. and globally?

Awards and Prizes

For each topic, there will be first, second, and third-place awards with cash prizes and honorable mention recipients. For each topic, each individual who is a first-place winner or is part of a first-place team will receive $600 individually. Next, for each topic, each individual who is a second-place winner or is part of a second-place team for each topic will receive $400 individually. Also, for each topic, each individual who is a third-place winner or is part of a third-place team for each topic will receive $200 individually. So, if you are part of a five-person team, you will each receive the same prize as an individual winner. Since teamwork is important in solving real problems, we want to create the same incentive to work as a five-person team (which could win up to $3,000 as a five-person team, or $600 each) as working as a smaller team or an individual.

The names, submission titles, a summary, and photo of each submission of all winners and all honorable mention recipients will be displayed on the Design Our Future website to celebrate the best efforts!

Additional Information

You can find more information on other pages of our site, including submitting your Entry and the Rules. If you have questions, please take a look at our FAQ or email us at [email protected].

We are excited to see your designs for solutions to these real problems and challenges that we and our communities will face together in our shared future!