2025 Competition
Anthony Wong, a fourth-year student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Carle Illinois College of Medicine, won the 2025 Falling Walls Lab Illinois competition on Sept. 12 at in Springfield, Ill. Wong earned the title of Illinois Young Innovator of the Year with his presentation “Breaking the Wall of Safer Childbirth,” in which he shared his team’s novel device to assist with difficult births in way that is simpler and less risky than traditional methods.
A panel of judges made up of leaders from Illinois’ public universities selected Wong’s presentation out of a field of 15 young innovators and entrepreneurs. Wong also won an all-expenses-paid trip to Berlin to compete at the global Falling Walls Lab finale on Nov. 6, 2025.
Named after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Falling Walls Lab competitions give early-stage innovators a platform to share their work and network. The competition brings together some of the top young innovators in the state to name the Illinois Young Innovator of the Year and send that individual to Berlin, Germany, to compete in the Falling Walls Lab global finale.
Read more about the 2025 competition here.