Bridge Design Contest (Engineering Encounters)
Free online contest designing a virtual steel truss bridge, local to national rounds.
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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.
California Young Playwrights Contest
Winning scripts get a full professional production or staged reading in San Diego.
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.
Kaggle: Spaceship Titanic
Free beginner-friendly ongoing ML competition on a public dataset.
NPR Student Podcast Challenge
Students write/record/produce an original 3-8 min podcast.
SSCS Arduino Contest (IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society)
A free, worldwide electronics competition in which high school teams of up to three build an Arduino-based household or personal innovation device using microcontrollers, sensors, motors, and displays (no integrated AI allowed for the high school category), submitting a three-minute demo video; free starter kits are available for students who need them.