ASHRAE High School Design Competition
A free, international virtual competition in which teams of 1-5 students ages 13-18 use SketchUp to design the HVAC system for an assigned building (2026: a fitness center in Cairo, Egypt), addressing heating/cooling loads, equipment selection, ductwork, and indoor air quality, judged by ASHRAE professionals for cash prizes.
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Bridge Design Contest (Engineering Encounters)
Free online contest designing a virtual steel truss bridge, local to national rounds.
Build A CubeSat Challenge (MIT Beaver Works)
A national MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute challenge in which teams of up to five U.S. high school students, guided by a coach, complete an online course and build hardware kits into satellite subsystems (power, optical payload, data analysis, wireless transmission) for a simulated Lunar Terrain Survey CubeSat mission, presenting via video to a panel in a live online final event.
NASA Dream With Us: High School Engineering Challenge
A national FAA/NASA aviation engineering design challenge in which teams of 3-7 students in grades 9-12, guided by an adult coach, design an aircraft concept using NASA's Vehicle Sketch Pad software and an engineering design notebook to solve a real-world aviation problem, culminating in live judged presentations.
Summer Springboard: Fundamentals of Engineering at UC Berkeley
A two-week immersive pre-college program held on the UC Berkeley campus where high schoolers tackle hands-on mechanical, structural, civil, and biomedical engineering design challenges, including building a prosthetic limb and a scale-model building to code and budget, plus tours of Tesla Fremont Factory and Google HQ.
GAMA Aviation Design Challenge
A national high school competition run by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association in which teams of at least three students use free X-Plane-powered flight simulation curricula to learn flight science, then modify an aircraft design and compete in a virtual fly-off scored on aerodynamic and performance metrics.
High School Health Research Challenge (HSHRC)
A virtual competition run by the High School Health Research Forum in which full-time students in grades 9-12 worldwide submit original, evidence-based proposals addressing a societal health issue; the 2026 season was listed as forthcoming as of this research.