On Thursday, 30 October 2025, we gathered once again under the bright lights and celebratory buzz of MOTAT, Auckland’s Museum of Transport and Technology, for the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow winners’ event. With balloons, nibbles, and buzzing conversations about the students’ clever prototypes, the evening was a reminder of how powerful student-led innovation can be when grounded in real-world issues, sound technological understanding, and deep community engagement.

The evening celebrated young technologists from across Aotearoa, each of whom brought a unique lens to issues of safety, health, accessibility, and kaitiakitanga (environmental stewardship). With whānau, teachers, and industry leaders present, the event was both heartwarming and galvanising. It made one thing clear: these young people aren’t just imagining better futures… they’re already building them.

What is Solve for Tomorrow?

Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is a nationwide STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) competition. Delivered in partnership with MOTAT and TENZ, this challenge encourages students in Years 7–13 to identify a community issue and develop a creative, feasible solution. Now in its fifth year in Aotearoa, the competition has continued to grow, with curriculum-aligned criteria for the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa (I tēnei tau tonu, kua puta ngā rauemi nō te ao Māori, kei roto i te reo Māori, ehara i te whakamāoritanga noa o ngā rauemi Pākehā).

Projects are judged on their application of STEAM, originality, relevance, feasibility, and presentation — but beyond that, the real magic lies in the competition’s power to connect students with their stakeholders: the communities and whānau that matter most to them.

Celebrating Our 2025 Winners

This year, the judges were struck by the strong systems thinking, refined prototypes, and well-developed consultation processes that underpinned the winning entries. Themes of AI innovation, user accessibility, and community need emerged across both junior and senior categories. Democratisation was also a common theme among Jack, Jesse, and Luke, who all sought to produce a cheaper solution for an existing product, making it more accessible to individuals, including young yachties, drivers of older model cars, and home bodies who wanted to recycle accurately.

Years 7–10 Category

First Place – Jack Harker, ACG Parnell College

Jack’s project, the Sail Race Tracker, is a low-cost live race tracking system for youth sailing. Using long-range radio devices and a cloud-based dashboard, Jack enabled real-time tracking for coaching analysis, making it easier for spectators to engage and follow the action. What impressed the judges most was Jack’s commitment to field testing and working with real-world stakeholders in the sailing community. In an island nation, this scalable innovation offers immediate and exciting potential.

Second Place – Luke Huang, Northcross Intermediate

Luke’s innovation, the Smart Sort, is a handheld device that helps households improve their recycling habits by identifying plastic types using invisible light. The aim? Reduce contamination and enhance the quality of recycling sent to processing centres. His elegant solution demonstrates how AI and optical technologies can be combined in a practical, user-friendly form: a compact tool with the potential for significant environmental impact.

Highly Commended – Gabriel Anthony, Whitby Collegiate

Returning with another stellar entry, Gabriel’s Pill AI app builds on his 2024-winning “Pill Bot.” This year’s version includes medicine identification, reminders, voice input, and language translation, all wrapped around trusted NZ health data. Designed to help people take the right medication at the right time, especially those with vision impairments (like his nanna) or English as a second language, Gabriel’s app exemplifies responsible tech design for health equity.

Years 11–13 Category

First Place – Cameron Moore, Rotorua Lakes High School

Cameron returned to the Solve for Tomorrow stage, having previously won the junior category (with a humane trap for wallabies), and this year, he took it up a gear with Air Brace, an inflatable, crash-sensing neck brace for mountain biking. Using motion detection, the brace deploys on impact to prevent serious spinal injury. The judges praised Cameron’s systems thinking, real-world testing, and his understanding of injury dynamics in high-impact sports. As Dr Joel Rindelaub noted, “Cameron’s Air Brace tackles a big safety issue in a simple way. It senses a crash and quickly inflates to hold the neck steady, while staying comfortable to wear. As he focuses on speeding up the reaction time and refining how quickly the device inflates, this has real potential to reduce severe neck injuries in mountain biking and other high-risk sports.”

Second Place – Jesse Rumball Smith, Wellington College

Jesse’s project, Building a Better Backseat Driver, turns your smartphone into an AI co-pilot using computer vision and audio to detect hazards and driver fatigue. It’s an ambitious take on road safety accessibility, repurposing the everyday smartphone to deliver powerful support to drivers, especially learners, shift workers, and those vulnerable to long-drive fatigue.

Check out the press coverage!

• Cameron on Herald NOW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VSFb4Dejwo
• Cameron and Jack on RNZ: https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2019010737/solve-for-tomorrow-winners-tackle-race-tracking-and-mountain-bike-safety
• Idealog talks about all of the winners this year:
  https://idealog.co.nz/tech/2025/11/young-kiwi-innovators-shine-at-samsungs-solve-for-tomorrow-competition 

What Made These Entries Stand Out?

What united these winners was their connection to the people they were designing for. Whether it was grandparents struggling with medication, Young yachties and their support crew looking for a cheaper way to track a race and improve performance, or householders keen to recycle right, or keen mountain bikers seeking a more comfortable solution to protect against neck injuries, these students listened, observed, tested, and iterated.

Each project showed:

• Authentic stakeholder engagement, going beyond asking questions towards co-designing, iterating and testing solutions with their stakeholders, the real users of a technological solution.
• STEAM integration, applying science, technology, and design principles to solve complex problems.
• Ethical intent, as projects were meaningful and created with others in mind.

Their solutions reflect the kind of technology and STEAM work we could be fostering in classrooms every day.

Why Get Involved in 2026?

The 2025 event showed us what can happen when student voice, teacher support, and industry partnerships align. With a total prize pool of $24,000 (including the latest in Samsung devices for students, teachers, and schools), there’s more reason than ever to get involved.

For Teachers:

• Junior and Senior entries align with NZC Technology.
• Senior entries align with NCEA Achievement Standards in Technology.
• Science and Technology Fair entries can be submitted by your students.
• Projects can be used as contexts for internal assessments, portfolios, or showcase pieces.
• For Māori-medium and bilingual kaiako, TENZ have worked to ensure the competition is available for Te Marautanga o Aotearoa pathways – Hangarau, Pūtaiao me ngā mahi PŪRAU.
  

For Students:

• It’s a chance to do real-world learning that actually matters to their communities.
• Solve for Tomorrow provides a national platform to showcase ideas to a supportive audience.
• Every finalist walks away with professional experience, media exposure, and confidence in their voice as a change-maker.

Looking Ahead

If you’ve been looking for a way to elevate student inquiry, promote authentic problem-solving, and spark future-focused thinking, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. The competition builds capability, confidence, and community connection.

Keep an eye on the official website for 2026 competition dates and resources. In the meantime, start talking to your students. Ask them:
“What’s a problem you care about… and what would you do to solve it?”

Because the future’s not something we wait for. It’s something we build together.