IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship recipients were celebrated in May at Regeneron’s International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, where three U.S. high school students were recognized for assistive technologies aimed at improving mobility and independence. About 16 percent of people worldwide, or more than 1 billion, live with a disability, according to the World Health Organization.
IEEE President Mary Ellen Randall presented the awards during a ceremony at the fair. Each honoree also received an IEEE President’s coin, which students described as a highlight of the event.
Hollie Tang earned the top IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship of US $10,000 for a wheelchair navigation system powered by a tongue-and-eye human-machine interface. The award is paid over four years of undergraduate study and includes a complimentary IEEE student membership.
Second-place winner Partap Sidhu received a $600 scholarship for a mind-controlled lower-limb exoskeleton. Third-place winner Calvin Shang Hung was awarded $400 for a rough-terrain hexapod robot. Both also received complimentary IEEE student memberships.
Established by the IEEE Foundation and administered by IEEE Educational Activities, the scholarship recognizes secondary school students who demonstrate strong achievement in electrical engineering, computer science, or other IEEE fields of interest.
IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship: controlling movement with the tongue
Tang, a sophomore at Wilson High School in Hacienda Heights, California, won for her Tonguage project, a noninvasive, computer-vision human-machine interface. Using tongue movements viewed by a standard laptop camera, the system enables cursor control, while eye blinks serve as clicks. The approach can operate computers and assistive devices, including power wheelchairs.
Tonguage converts tongue and eye motions into commands through multiple signals, including the tongue’s position in the mouth and continuous movement patterns. The multimodal design fuses tongue input with other facial cues to increase reliability.
A face-tracking feature verifies that commands originate from the intended user and filters out other people who enter the camera view. Tang said that safeguard is especially important for wheelchair navigation.
Accessibility guided the design. Tang built the system to run on inexpensive, widely available laptop cameras rather than specialized equipment. “Mobility conditions don’t discriminate,” she said. “They can affect anyone of any income, gender, and socioeconomic status.”
Initially conceived as a keyboard-and-mouse substitute, the project expanded to applications such as wheelchair navigation, robotic arm control, and gaming. “People deserve the freedom to play games and enjoy entertainment as well,” Tang said. A visit to a rehabilitation center reinforced her focus on empathy in engineering. “Empathy is hard to teach in a classroom, but it can be learned through experience,” she said.
Mind-controlled exoskeleton
Sidhu, a junior at Bethpage High School in New York, took second place for NeuroGait, a lower-limb exoskeleton operated by brain signals. He said the idea stemmed from volunteering at a community center without elevators, where he watched people with mobility challenges struggle on stairs.
The system reads the Bereitschaftspotential, a faint electrical signal that appears one to two seconds before voluntary movement. With a custom electroencephalogram headset and a convolutional neural network, NeuroGait classifies intended actions and sends commands to a 3D-printed frame. Instead of rigid motors, Sidhu used pneumatic artificial muscles he designed to mimic human movement. “The pneumatic artificial muscle in itself is so compliant that it’s able to adjust to the limitations of the human body,” he said.
In testing across 500 trials, the CNN reached 99.9 percent accuracy in detecting intended movement, and the end-to-end system achieved 95.2 percent accuracy. Sidhu built the entire setup for about $276, which he noted is less than 1 percent of the $40,000 to $100,000 typical cost of commercial exoskeletons, citing a 2025 revenue report from Roots Analysis. He hopes to deploy NeuroGait at the community center that inspired the project and credits staying current with research from leading institutions for his progress. “To be successful in research, you have to know what’s being done right now,” he said.
A spider-inspired robot
Hung, a sophomore at El Cerrito High School in California, placed third with Math Into Motion: Robotic Hexapod for Hazardous Environments. The six-legged design targets areas too unstable for people or conventional robots.
Starting only weeks before the fair deadline and with no prior electrical engineering experience, Hung drew on his interest in space exploration and observations of rovers such as Curiosity and Perseverance on uneven terrain. He determined a hexapod could better handle rugged ground. As the project evolved, he adapted the robot to humanitarian scenarios after watching coverage of the 2023 earthquake in Türkiye and global conflicts. With a stable tripod gait in which three legs remain on the ground while the other three move, the robot could navigate collapsed structures to find survivors or carry sensitive supplies such as insulin in conflict zones.
The current version uses three mathematical techniques to coordinate movement. Inverse kinematics converts target leg positions into motor angles. Linear interpolation breaks motions into smaller steps for smooth travel. Euclidean transformations translate the robot’s direction into commands for each leg, regardless of its orientation.
Hung taught himself printed circuit board design, 3D modeling, coding, and soldering. He said the hardest challenge was developing the math to coordinate legs facing different directions. After seven months of work, a major circuit board failure in the third prototype nearly ended the effort. “There was a really strong moment of ‘Should I just give up?’” he recalled. He simplified and rebuilt the system, and the fourth version became the first to walk across his living room floor. His advice to peers: find a project that becomes a passion, because then “designing it almost starts to feel like fun.”
The three projects reflect a broader theme in engineering, with technical skill guided by empathy and public benefit. Through programs such as the IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship, the IEEE Foundation highlights and supports young researchers focused on assistive technology and robotics. For Tang, Sidhu, and Hung, the ISEF stage marked an early step toward careers aimed at advancing technology for human welfare.
In addition to scholarships and recognition, IEEE supports emerging technologists through leadership events such as the IEEE International Leadership Conference, which connects students and professionals shaping the future of technology.