WZ
Wei Zhang
Tsinghua University · Grand Prize
Quantum error correction for photonic chips you can actually fabricate.
Now leading the Photonics Compute Lab at Tsinghua. Seed-funded by Sequoia Capital China, 2026.
The names already on the record, what the prize actually includes, the speaking tour, and how anyone can verify a certificate.
A 7MT prize is not equity, not a job, and not an immigration letter. It is a cash award (figures for 2026 are confirmed with prize-pool partners in September and announced before the finale), a certificate with a public verification ID, optional introductions to investors and labs that the winner may decline, travel to the next stage for anyone who advances, and — for the grand-prize winner — a speaking tour of host campuses and selected partner stages in the following calendar year. Runner-up and People’s Choice receive a smaller cash award, a certificate, and invitations to selected tour stops. Heat top-three receive a certificate and semifinal travel. We do not take a share of a company. We do not sell certificates. Video-only applicants who are not shortlisted do not receive a participation certificate. Terms: Terms.
The tour is scheduled with the winner, not assigned as a transferable asset. Typical stops are the eight host campuses plus one or two festival stages that ask in writing. The winner delivers a version of the seven-minute talk, sometimes with a longer seminar the host organises separately — that seminar is the host’s event, not a 7MT heat. 7MT covers speaker travel for confirmed tour dates; hosts cover the room. If a winner cannot travel, we do not send a substitute to deliver their talk. Alumni from runner-up and People’s Choice may be invited to a subset of stops. The tour is a platform, not a product-placement circuit: the same no-props, one-slide constraint applies unless the host has separately booked a workshop.
Heat finalists, semifinalists, grand-finalists, and named prize winners receive a 7MT certificate with a unique ID and a QR code. Paste the URL or the ID at cert/verify.html. A valid record shows name, year, stage, and role. A missing checksum or an ID we did not issue fails. Employers should use the page rather than a forwarded PDF. Spelling errors: email hello@7mt.org with the ID; we reissue and retire the old record. Forging or selling a certificate is prohibited.
Shanghai grand finale · 12 finalists from 9 countries
Quantum error correction for photonic chips you can actually fabricate.
Now leading the Photonics Compute Lab at Tsinghua. Seed-funded by Sequoia Capital China, 2026.
Carbon-negative cement, made by bacteria that eat what we already exhale.
Spun out CarbonCure SG. First commercial pour at Marina Bay, March 2026.
Sub-second LLM inference on a phone that fits in your pocket.
Open-sourced as pocket-llm. 28k stars on GitHub within three months.
London grand finale · 12 finalists from 11 countries
Diagnosing malaria from a single drop of blood and a smartphone camera.
Deployed across 14 clinics in Lagos by end of 2025.
Folding proteins without folding GPUs into nuclear power plants.
Published in Nature, May 2025. Now at DeepMind.
Self-healing concrete inspired by how bones repair themselves.
Pilot bridge installation in Boston, August 2025.
Boston grand finale · 12 finalists from 8 countries
A battery that recharges itself from the heat your hand gives off.
Now powering medical wearables in three EU pilots.
Teaching neural networks to forget — and why that matters for your privacy.
Forget.ai, $4M seed round, 2024.
Mapping ocean plastic from low Earth orbit, on a CubeSat the size of a shoebox.
First satellite launched January 2025.