The Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Waltham is looking for help in identifying local immigrant innovators who might be candidates for a project they’re doing in collaboration with Waltham High School students called “Immigrant Innovators Among Us.” 

In a follow-up to last year’s Almost Forgotten Immigrant Inventors program, the Museum is again collaborating with the Changemaker Academy at Waltham High to highlight the stories of immigrants who have changed our world. This time, the end result will be a set of exhibits at the Museum telling the stories of local, present-day immigrant innovators.

The people the Museum is looking to profile are:

• Innovators who have created change by coming up with and applying ideas in new ways. Their innovations might be inventions, but could also be new processes, business models, social/political structures, or cultural/artistic forms.
• First-generation immigrants, preferably with clear recollections of coming to the U.S. that they are willing to share.
• Local, with priority given to those currently living or working in or near Waltham. People in surrounding areas can be proposed, although unless there is a more local connection we would like to stay away from the “treasure troves” of Boston and Cambridge. 
• Accessible, since one of the key elements of the project is that the students will interview the person on video and hopefully include loaned artifacts or other representative items in the exhibit.

Sound like anyone you know? If so, email Weston resident ( and Charles River Museum board member) Rudy Ruggles at rudy.ruggles@crmii.org by January 31, 2023.

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The Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation’s mission is to educate people about America’s industrial history and to encourage and inspire future innovation. We do this by creating engaging experiences that highlight the many fascinating technical and business innovations that have taken place in this region and continue to change the world. Located in the Francis Cabot Lowell Mill (154 Moody Street, Waltham), an icon of the American Industrial Revolution, the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation brings together intriguing artifacts, cultural insights, and inspiring stories to delight people of all ages, enabling them to see the past and envision the future.