18-Year-Old Wins $100K Top ISEF Prize for MCMC Method Sampling Origami Motions
burny_tech · x · 2026-10-02
Hikaru Kuribayashi, an 18-year-old student from Sapporo, Japan, won the top $100,000 award at the 2026 Regeneron ISEF for his work on the mathematics of flexible structures.
- Inspired by origami and ladybug wings, he developed a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to sample the full configuration space of origami and linkages
- His model treats folds as graphs and uses statistical mechanics to explore many possible motions
- The work connects traditional Japanese art with modern computation for engineering applications
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