Gallery: A Scouting Guide to the Top High School Inventors

Invention: Industrial-Strength Geothermal Generator
Quadrilingual by age three, Daniel Asturias showed his innovative spark early on. He set up contraptions around the house and pursued unusual hobbies like building chain-mail armor and pruning bonsai trees. He’s also self-taught in differential equations, theoretical physics and thermoacoustics. This year, Asturias and his teammate Isaac Harwell designed an underwater geothermal complex for geyser-like heat vents. The prospective system would have 150 generators placed over the vents, and each one could produce at least 45 megawatts of energy, adding up to some 6.8 gigawatts—
or as much energy as three nuclear power plants. Little work has been done using these ocean vents because they sit on fault lines miles below the surface, making them expensive to access. Asturias’s design has no moving parts and requires little maintenance, which would eliminate repair trips. The project won first place and $10,000 at this year’s prestigious Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation high-school invention competition.

GPA: 3.9; weighted 4.45
SAT Score: 2200 (out of 2400)
Patents: One pending
College: He’s been offered full tuition to the University of Texas.