Researchers, designers, and engineers embrace the ongoing maker movement and view ‘grassroots innovation’ as essentially important for staying competitive in both academia and in industry. The research team gives full play to its expertise on innovation and entrepreneurship education. In the past five years of actively participating in the China-U.S. Young Maker Competition, the team coached and worked with over five hundred student makers to create innovative engineering prototypes focusing on the areas of community development, education, environmental protection, health and fitness, energy, transportation, and other areas of sustainable development by combining innovative design and emerging technologies. Several conceptual designs and developments are described. A transdisciplinary engineering design and teaching approach is presented and discussed. Due to the limited time allowed by the competition, more thorough design and development iterations will take place in a future study.