Dear Future Builder.
Students bringing bold projects to life alongside the people who do it for a living. Real problems, real making, one story at a time.
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A Message to the Next Generation of Makers
Featuring the voices behind the series
The voices of Dear Future Builder tell the next generation why there’s never been a better time to build.
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Find the Unmet Need
Melanie Zu (U.S. Student Champion) & Kari Byron, Mythbusters
Melanie Zu read one paper — people born with a broken copy of a receptor called GPR75 rarely become obese — and it lit a fuse. The Pennsylvania high schooler cold-emailed the professor studying it, spent a summer in his wet lab, and mapped how the receptor drives weight gain, pointing toward an obesity drug without the side effects of today’s GLP-1s.
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Build the World in Front of You
Wanda Wu (U.S. Student Champion) & Dr. Tracy Fanara
Wanda Wu built a household sensor that detects PFAS “forever chemicals” in drinking water — no lab required. Environmental scientist Dr. Tracy Fanara on nurturing young talent and building a world that doesn’t exist yet.
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You Have the Skills
Sathvik Dasari (U.S. Student Champion) & Matt Draper
Sathvik Dasari built a low-cost sensor that uses machine learning to predict air pollution — accurate enough to rival $200,000 monitoring stations, cheap enough for any community to own. Matthew C. Draper, PhD — Deputy Director of the Innovation Capability and Modernization (ICAM) Office — on turning the impossible into hardware, and why confidence is the skill that makes every other skill count.
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Keep Pursuing It
Nichelle Thinagar (U.S. Student Champion) & David Berry
Nichelle Thinagar built a biomimetic robotic snake to slip through rubble and carry food and water to survivors until rescue crews arrive — its 3D-printed scales smooth one way, rough the other, just like a real snake. Project MFG’s David Berry, who teaches machining full-time, on the craft behind every man-made thing and the obsession that turns a good idea into one that changes the world.
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Manufacturing Has Changed
Levi Dunn (U.S. Student Champion) & Kurt Helison
Levi Dunn turned two passions — recycling and 3D printing — into one machine: wash, shred, melt, and compress plastic waste into fresh printer filament. St. Cloud State’s Kurt Helison, who brings America’s Cutting Edge into high schools, on why modern manufacturing is bright, clean, and creative — and why making a part beats calculating one.
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Softening the Impact
Elle Saleeby (U.S. Student Champion) & Timothy Holland, ADTM
After being hit by a car while walking home from school, Elle Saleeby learned that the foam padding in her backpack may have helped protect her spinal cord. Realizing that many lower-cost backpacks offer little or no padding, she designed an insertable impact-foam liner — testing materials, thicknesses, and prototypes to make added protection more accessible to students. Timothy Holland of ADTM joins Elle in a story about how innovation can begin with one simple question: What could have made this safer for someone else?
Watch →Are you a future builder?
Every big idea starts with a student who decided to build it. Show us what you built — and see where it takes you.