14yo won $25k for origami, discovered pattern that holds 10k times its weight

Miles Wu placed first in the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge. The top 30 finalists are listed here: https://www.societyforscience.org/jic/2025-project-showcase/

Title is misleading: he did not discover the pattern, he "measured the weight that Miura-ori origami patterns can hold across various benchmarks". This pattern is not new.

And then I really don't get the "disaster relief" part: how would this help build solid tents? If you lay the pattern flat on the ground, sure it holds a lot of weight. But instead of this pattern, if you pile up stuff directly on the ground, usually it holds very well too...

Then could you build a wall with that structure? Not clear to me how that would help. And it doesn't seem like it would hold on a flat roof.

It's nice that a 14yo systematically tested a structure and all, and good for him for winning a competition. But it seems a bit exagerated to say that he discovered a pattern that could help for disaster relief.