The Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies 15th Annual Undergraduate Global Health Technologies Design Competition will feature national and international student teams presenting low-cost technologies designed to address global health challenges in resource-limited settings. The 2025 Competition will be hosted on April 11, 2025, on the Rice University Campus in Houston, Texas, with virtual participation options also available to student teams.
All teams selected as semi-finalists will have the option to receive coaching from mentors in global health. Using insights from coaching, teams will prepare oral presentations (<6 minutes), which will be presented live at the competition finale on April 11 to a panel of judges from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including medicine, engineering, and public health. Judges will select awards for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, along with other sponsored awards for projects making advances in digital health or materials sciences, focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion, utilizing or producing open-sourced material, and evolving a previously existing project.
Competition eligibility criteria:
- Teams can be comprised of undergraduate students from any major.
- Design must address a global health need using a technical approach.
- Projects can emanate from coursework or other extracurricular activities.
- Teams should incorporate the design constraints encountered in providing healthcare in resource-limited settings.
Award Information
Entries will be judged on the quality of the problem definition, the effectiveness and potential impact of the design solution, and the likelihood that the design solution can be successful in improving healthcare delivery in a low-resource setting.
Rice360 is thrilled to offer cash prizes for top competitors at the competition. Judges will select award winners based on the evaluation rubric here.
The 2025 competition awards include: 1st Place: $5,000, 2nd Place: $3,000, 3rd Place: $2,000, Crystal Sea Award: $1,000, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award: $1,000, Public Invention Open Source Award: $1,000, Public Invention Incremental Improvement Award, $1,000, and the People’s Choice Award: $500. Outside of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Place awards, semi-finalist teams are eligible for multiple awards.
Crystal Sea Award: $1,000
The Crystal Sea Award ($1,000) honors student innovators who leverage innovation to address an unmet health need. The award aims to incentivize and celebrate student-led innovation that improves global health equity. The 2025 Crystal Sea Award will go to a team whose design best expands innovation in materials sciences or digital innovation. The Crystal Sea Award honors Dr. Li's grandfather, Haiqing Du, a materials science professor in Hunan University in China.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award: $1,000
The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award ($1,000) honors student innovators who thoughtfully consider diversity, equity, and inclusion issues throughout the design process. The award aims to elevate and celebrate student-led innovation that advances equity by designing global health technologies that address unmet health needs, particularly for marginalized populations.
Public Invention Open-Source Award: $1,000
The Public Invention Open-Source Award ($1,000) honors student innovators who develop the best fully open-source project. An open-source project is one that has been released under an open-sourced hardware license on the day of the competition. The purpose of this award is to encourage teams to make it easier for future teams to use their research. This award is sponsored by Public Invention, a 501c3 charity sponsoring work that is free and open to all under share-alike public licenses.
Public Invention Incremental Improvement Award: $1,000
The Public Invention Incremental Improvement Award ($1,000) honors student innovators who produce the most significant improvement to a project previously created by a substantially different team. Following academic standards of acknowledging previous work, the winning team should document their incremental improvement to the previous project.
People's Choice Award: $500
Online voting for the People’s Choice Award ($500) will open April 1, 2025 and close during the competition on April 11, 2025.
How to Apply
The application form includes the following three requirements:
- Problem Definition - 50 words or less
- Innovation Summary - 50 words or less
- Abstract - 300 words or less and must include:
- Description of the design problem and assessment of the need for the solution
- Design criteria and constraints
- Description and status of your proposed solution, along with successes, limitations, and future work
- You may include one figure or table with a caption (not required)
- Project Video - Each team should submit a video about the problem your team aims to solve and your team’s general approach
- Teams will upload this video as an unlisted YouTube video in the application form
- See below for more information on the video requirements
- Project Image - high quality sketch or image of your innovation
Please kindly note that team videos should not include any proprietary information surrounding the project. Teams will upload this video as an unlisted YouTube video in the application form.
Video content should answer the following:
- What global health challenge motivates the technology?
- What is the global health need your technology addresses?
- Who will benefit? (Example: “Patients in low-resource hospitals where suction pumps are needed but there is no electricity.”)
- How will the technology fit/fill the need? (Example: “The suction pump avoids the need for electricity as it is solar powered.”)
- What is your proposed solution? Please specify any results/findings if you have had a chance to test the technology. (Example: “We have tested the suction pump measuring the vacuum it generates using a vacuum gauge,” or “We have compared the suction pump to an existing suction pump at the hospital,” or “We plan to do a pressure test”…)
- What are your successes, limitations, and future plans?
Evaluations of applications
Applications will be evaluated by design judges using this evaluation rubric. We encourage all teams to consider this evaluation rubric when preparing their applications.
Questions?
Please contact:
Michelle Nodskov
michelle.nodskov@rice.edu