Lemelson-MIT awards grants to 19 schools and colleges for invention education

The Lemelson-MIT Program, part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's School of Engineering, announced on November 2, 2026, that it had awarded multiyear grants and stipends to 19 schools, districts and colleges through a new initiative called Invention Education Pathways. The program aims to give students linked invention experiences from kindergarten through college rather than one-off projects. MIT did not state the value of the grants.

Recipients are grouped in three regions. Seven are in Northern California, including California State University, Stanislaus, Columbia College and several unified school districts. Seven are in Tennessee, among them Apison Elementary School, Battle Academy and the Red Bank elementary, middle and high schools. Five are in Massachusetts and Connecticut, including Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, Watertown High School and Westfield State University. Over the next three years, Lemelson-MIT staff will work with educators to design and run classroom activities in which student teams identify problems and build prototype solutions, with optional use of the program's curriculum materials. Leaders from the three regions first met in June.

MIT presented the initiative as aligned with MIT for America, an effort launched by the university's president to widen access to STEM education from kindergarten to community college, including a focus on designing and making. The Lemelson-MIT Program has worked in K-12 classrooms for nearly 25 years, and its InvenTeams high school initiative has produced 24 US patents.