In a year full of innovation, the Young Inventors’ Program (YIP) continues to lead the way to engage students in hands-on learning within shifts to remote and hybrid school models. With more students learning at home and schools looking for STEM opportunities to complement their curricula, our program is strong across NH, MA, and VT. We have also welcomed new programs from Northern New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as a larger group of students inventing independently throughout our region and beyond to communities in FL, VA and CO. Each of these students is developing essential critical thinking and problem solving skills, as well as learning about invention design and entrepreneurship.

The Northern New England Invention Convention will be virtual again this spring. Last year’s quick pivot to a virtual competition was a huge success thanks to you, our dedicated judges. With your feedback, we made improvements to both the inventor and the judge experience. The VIRTUAL 2021 New England Invention Convention will run throughout the month of April, and will recognize 300 of the top inventors from YIP and honor them with awards and the opportunity to advance to the Invention Convention US Nationals.

We are seeking judges to help by viewing videos and project materials to evaluate their presentations and design process. We are grateful for your past commitment to YIP and we hope that you will join us again to celebrate and recognize the efforts and achievements of our students.

The judging commitment entails your participation in a Judge Orientation prior to the virtual competition, viewing projects over a two-week period, meeting with your judge team to deliberate and make awards decisions, and you are welcome to join us for the awards celebration. You will be able to do much of the work on your own time at your convenience. In addition to judging, we need several judges to volunteer to lead the judging teams to schedule and facilitate the team deliberation and to submit the final results.

Register to Judge

Please RSVP to judge this year. Our new sign-up system will ask you to create a new account as a UNH Learn for Life user. Set up a user name and password, then complete the registration form. Thank you so much.

Invent On!

Tina White, YIP Director