Meet Miles Wu, the 14-year-old New York student using origami to explore stronger, foldable emergency shelters |
At 14, Miles Wu is exploring how an ancient paper-folding technique could inspire stronger, more portable structures for emergencies. Wu, an eighth grader at Hunter College High School in New York, spent the past year researching Miura-ori, a geometric origami pattern known for folding flat sheets into compact shapes. His interest grew as he read about disasters, including the Los Angeles wildfires and Hurricane Helene. He wondered if the pattern’s combination of strength, portability and foldability could make it useful for deployable shelters. To test the idea, Wu created 54 different variations of Miura-ori, changing its dimensions, folding angles and paper weights. The strongest designs supported an extraordinary 9,069 times their own weight. Their project, titled “Optimizing the Strength-to-Weight Ratio of Miura-Ori Patterns,” was selected for the Thermo Fisher Scientific 2025 Junior Innovators Challenge. The details of their experiment and its background are documented by the Society for Science.
Miles Wu found an engineering question within his love of origami
Wu had been folding origami for seven years when his hobby began to develop into a scientific interest. Over the past year, he has become particularly fascinated by Miura-ori, a repeating arrangement of parallelograms that allows a flat sheet to collapse into a much smaller area. The boss immediately suggested a practical possibility. Because Miura-ori structures can be folded and transported compactly while maintaining considerable strength, Wu began thinking about their potential use in emergency shelters. His idea was also shaped by natural disasters. As he read about events like the Los Angeles wildfires and Hurricane Helene, he considered how emergency structures need to be transported, deployed, and strengthened to protect people. Instead of starting with a full-scale construction project, he boiled the problem down to a simpler question: Which version of the fold can support the most weight?
He tested 54 versions of the Miura-ori pattern.
Wu designed his experiment around three main geometric variables. He tested two parallelogram heights, three widths, and three fold angles. It also compared different types of paper, from regular copy paper to heavier cardstock. The combinations produced 54 different variants, with each folded structure opening into an area of 64 square inches. Wu then placed each design between the railings, keeping the structures five inches apart, before progressively adding weight until the folds collapsed. The experiment required much more force than I initially expected. To carry out subsequent tests accurately, Wu had to obtain 50-pound exercise weights. Its strongest folds ultimately supported 9,069 times its own weight, producing a surprising strength-to-weight ratio result for such lightweight structures. Their results also revealed that geometry mattered significantly. Smaller panels combined with steeper angles produced stronger structures, while, surprisingly, regular copy paper performed better than the heavier paper he tested.
Centuries-old folding technique could inspire emergency shelters
The potential application behind Wu’s experiment is particularly relevant after disasters, when shelters may need to be moved quickly and deployed in areas where conventional construction is difficult. In principle, a Miura-ori-inspired structure could be compressed into a relatively small shape for transport and then expanded at its destination. Its repetitive geometry could also allow a large surface area to be created without the need for a correspondingly large volume during transport. But Wu’s research is not yet a finished shelter design. Their experiments tested folded paper structures under increasing loads rather than a full-scale building exposed to wind, rain, or other forces. Turning the result into a practical emergency shelter would require different materials, larger-scale testing and engineering analysis. What Wu has demonstrated is the underlying principle: Geometry can dramatically alter the efficiency with which a material supports weight. A structure does not necessarily need more material to become stronger; Sometimes changing the way that material is organized can make all the difference.
His origami research could be the start of a broader scientific journey.
Wu’s project is part of a much broader interest in origami that extends beyond scientific competition. Her fascination with folding intensified during the pandemic and she later entered her creations in the Origami by Children contest. Some of his works have even appeared on the American Museum of Natural History’s Christmas tree. He has also used origami for charity, folding and selling 200 origami doves of his own design to benefit the Wild Bird Fund. Despite his current research focused on engineering, Wu says he hopes to become a biologist, with a special interest in how plants and animals survive and thrive in cities. Therefore, his Miura-ori experiment sits at an interesting intersection between art, mathematics and engineering. What began as years of paper folding turned into a systematic investigation involving 54 structural variations and hundreds of measurements. The result is not yet a production-ready disaster shelter. But Wu’s work demonstrates how a simple question: How much force can a carefully folded sheet produce? can open the door to much broader ideas about lightweight structures, efficient materials and emergency design.
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