Brothers Jaiden and Deven Reddy were tired of seeing their friends vaping. At their Las Vegas, Nevada, school, students sneak e-cigarettes in the bathrooms and the halls, they say. Teens do it at other schools too. U.S. data show that nearly 40 percent of 12th-graders vaped nicotine in 2018. Nicotine is highly addictive and can impair memory.
So the brothers teamed up with three of their friends—also brothers—to invent VapeMate, a device that can be attached to an e-cigarette to track nicotine intake. A linked app can then shut off the vape at a preset limit. This can help users quit vaping over time.
The group won a top prize last spring in the Conrad Challenge, an international