Minnesota Rubber & Plastics Launches Young Innovators STEM Contest for Middle Schoolers
Students’ innovative ideas can win an engineer-for-a-day experience at Minnesota Rubber & Plastics’ new Innovation Center and $2,500 in STEM supplies for their school
MINNEAPOLIS – Nov. 1, 2021 – Quadion LLC, d.b.a. Minnesota Rubber and Plastics, a leading provider of highly engineered elastomer and thermoplastic solutions, today launched its first-ever contest to celebrate young innovators in 6th through 8th grades. The Minnesota Rubber & Plastics Young Innovators Contest encourages middle school students who are interested in STEM to submit their creative solutions to help solve problems that are important to all of us — including environmental sustainability, water quality, transportation efficiency and healthcare.
“Today’s middle school students are the next generation of engineers, scientists, analysts, and innovators,” said Karthik Viswanathan, Vice President, Product Development at Minnesota Rubber & Plastics. “We want to encourage students who are interested in science, technology, engineering, and math to continue to explore their passion and make a difference in the world by sharing their big ideas. There are no limits to the innovation and creativity right here in our own communities and we want to help foster the curiosity of middle school students in the tri-state area through the Young Innovators contest.”
Individual students or teams of up to eight students within 150 miles of the Minnesota Rubber & Plastics headquarters in Plymouth, Minn. are eligible to enter. The student or team with the winning entry will visit Minnesota Rubber & Plastics’ brand new $7 million state-of-the-art Innovation Center in the Spring of 2022, where they’ll experience being an engineer for a day with some of the industry’s top materials scientists and engineers. In addition, the winning student or team’s school will receive $2,500 in STEM supplies.
Entries for the Young Innovators contest will be accepted online through December 31. A committee of judges from the Minnesota Rubber & Plastics leadership team will select the winning entry based on the creativity, practicality and quality of the innovation in addition to the potential positive impact on the world.
The winner will be announced no later than March 1, 2022.
To submit entries and learn more about Minnesota Rubber & Plastics’ Young Innovators contest, please visit www.mnrubber.com/innovation-contest.
About Minnesota Rubber & Plastics
Minnesota Rubber & Plastics (MRP) is a leader in material compound development and the manufacturing of custom elastomeric and thermoplastic components. For 76 years, the company has built a reputation for consultative design services and successful production of “the tough parts.” With facilities across North America, Europe, and Asia, MRP collaborates with customers to solve difficult sealing and component challenges across multiple markets. Capabilities include materials science and formulation, new product prototyping, operational excellence and supply chain consolidation. The company’s new Innovation Center provides its customers with direct access to materials science expertise and a fully integrated design-build-prototype-test process that enhances innovation and greatly accelerates product development. The company places emphasis on research and development and empowers its technicians to design, formulate, develop, and test a wide range of highly engineered materials and parts. For more information, please visit www.mnrubber.com.
Media Contacts:
Minnesota Rubber and Plastics
Karl Spilseth
Global Marketing
(952) 927-2161
kspilseth@mnrubber.com
