May 21, 2025
Ferris State’s international Wege Prize competition names 2025 winners, ignites game-changing solutions for the future with $65,000 in awards
A plan to develop a sustainable and scalable model to fight malnutrition earned first prize in the 12th annual Wege Prize international student design competition, which featured teams leaning into the economy of tomorrow to help build a better future for all.
Organized by Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art and Design, Wege Prize has been inspiring college and university students from across the globe to rethink the way we produce and consume.
Teams compete for a share of $65,000 in cash prizes by collaborating across fields of knowledge and institutional and geographic boundaries to develop solutions to real-world systemic problems like food insecurity, environmental harm, and climate change.
Through an immersive nine-month design process, they’re guided in the development of their ideas by feedback from a global panel of expert judges and the principles of the circular economy, a model that redefines economic growth by focusing on positive society-wide benefits.
The five teams who emerged from an initial pool of 90 to be named finalists in this year’s competition presented their fully developed ideas on this month at the 2025 Wege Prize Awards.
“KCAD and Ferris State University are proud to provide this powerful global platform for nurturing and amplifying bold ideas for the future,” KCAD President Tara McCrackin said. “With more than 1,700 participants engaged from 68 countries around the world over its 12-year history, Wege Prize reflects the reality that our capacity for solving wicked problems together is only growing stronger—and it proves that challenges are only insurmountable when we face them in isolation.”
Winner of first place and $30,000 was team Agpress, with members studying in the United States, Costa Rica, and Tanzania. The team impressed the judges with the simple elegance of their circular solution to combat malnutrition by enhancing the nutritional content of ugali, a staple food made from maize flour that’s consumed in over 20 countries across Africa.
While protein-enriched flour is itself nothing new, Agpress’s process circularizes the concept by using two abundant agricultural waste streams—maize leaves and cassava leaves—as a feedstock for farming mealworms. Mealworms are rich in protein and essential amino acids, iron, zinc, fiber, and vitamin B, and can be easily ground into a flour that can be blended with maize flour to produce ugali with drastically enhanced nutritional value.
The low-cost inputs of the team’s system coupled with the superior feed conversion -- total feed input divided by subsequent livestock weight gain -- of mealworm farming—1.7:1 versus 2.5:1 for poultry and 6:1 for beef—equals an affordable and accessible nutritional stream that can have immediate impact in Africa and be scaled into other countries and refugee settlements around the world where food insecurity persists.
Agpress is also developing a line of food products made from mealworm-enriched maize flour, including snack chips and tortillas, that will aid in increased adoption and provide their business with additional revenue streams.
“Agpress stood out by approaching their idea in an impressively cohesive and systemic way,” said judge Skot Welch, principal and founder of Global Bridgebuilders. “They considered not just how this could work on a local level, but how it could scale beyond that and become part of a larger circular economic system.”
Winner of second place was team Rethread Africa, with all members studying in Kenya. Their proposal centered on converting sugarcane bagasse—the fourth largest source of agricultural waste in the world—into a biodegradable alternative to traditional plastic synthetics that decomposes in natural environments.
Using locally sourced microbes and solvent-free processes powered by renewable energy, the team is using sugarcane bagasse to produce Polyhydroxyalkanoates, a type of bioplastic resin. In addition to producing viable prototypes of their material, the team has been developing a network of industry partnerships to begin incorporating it into products that are fully or partially composed of polyester and other petroleum-based materials, including clothing, food packaging, and feminine hygiene products.
Ultimately, Rethread Africa is aimed at helping eliminate reliance on petroleum-based materials while valorizing waste that would otherwise pollute land and air—a ripe market opportunity given the accelerating development of bioplastics and other bio-based materials.
“This was an incredible display of innovation in the bioplastics space, and these kinds of models are critical for further support and scaling of bio-based materials,” said judge Alysia Garmulewicz, founder and co-CEO of Materiom, a platform providing open data and AI to accelerate the development of bio-based materials. “Most notable is the team’s leveraging of industry relationships and use of a locally appropriate feedstock derived from waste rather than raw material, which is critical to the success of novel polymers like PHA when you consider how costly they can be to manufacture.”
Winner of third place was team Envirovex, with members studying in England, Spain, and the United States. The team is developing an innovative bio-based technology that can help existing wastewater treatment systems adapt to the increasing presence of antibiotics released from agriculture, livestock, pharmaceutical, and wastewater discharge.
Using artificial intelligence and cutting-edge synthetic biology, the team has created a series of synthetic enzymes that can be incorporated into a standalone filtration device to more effectively and efficiently filter out antibiotics—all at the fraction of a cost of completely retrofitting existing treatment systems. The team is even working on a way for their filtration system to capture and reuse some the chemicals used to create the antibiotics.
“The judges have never seen a solution like this before, and while there are still some finer points to iron out, we acknowledge the tremendous potential here. This is an incredibly innovative solution in a sector that sorely needs it,” said judge Nathan Shedroff, an entrepreneur, business strategist, education innovator, author, and speaker. “As they take this idea out of the lab and into the world, we’re excited to see this team continue to embrace a circular model while refining the social and cultural impacts of what they’re building.”
DryFresh Solution and EcoNasi received $2,500 Finalist Awards.
Dry Fresh Solution, with team members studying in Rwanda, presented a solar-powered dehydrator that extends the shelf life of fruit and vegetables by removing moisture through indirect heating, reducing post-harvest losses.
Eco Nasi, with team members studying in Kenya, presented a novel technology that converts pineapple pulp waste into a premium high performance leather alternative that is five times more durable than conventional leather.
Wege Prize 2026 is already under way, with organizers encouraging potential participants around the world to begin networking and building teams over the summer. The team application portal will open in August.
To learn more, visit wegeprize.org.