A high school student has won the top prize in the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge by modifying a traditional origami fold to support over 9000 times its weight. 14-year-old Miles Wu, of New York City, won the $25,000 grand prize by turning his love of origami into a science project.

Miles, an 8th grader at Hunter College High School, has practiced the Japanese art of paper folding since he was seven years old. He started taking the hobby more seriously during the pandemic, winning contests and even having his work displayed on the American Museum of Natural History holiday tree, which is viewed by hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Using the Miura-ori or Miura fold, a tessellated pattern of parallelograms that forms a rigid structure, Miles tested 54 variations. He

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