Including Kiara Nirghin from South Africa who won the top prize.
Three Indian-origin teenagers won top prizes at the 2016 Google Science Fair, in Mountain View, California, including the top prize of $50,000 which went to Kiara Nirghin, 16, from South Africa for an invention from orange and avocado peels to help fight drought. Anushka Naiknaware, 13, from Oregon, won the $15,000 ‘The LEGO Education Builder Award’ for her invention on chronic wound care and Advay Ramesh, 15, from Chennai, India, won a $15,000 Community Impact Award for his method to help fishermen.
Nirghin, a Grade 11 student at private school St Martin’s, in Johannesburg, submitted her project titled ‘No More Thirsty Crops’ aimed at alleviating the severe drought plaguing South Africa. Her solution to the problem of drought uses the peels from orange and avocado fruits, which were normally discarded.
The Google Science Fair is a program for any budding scientists between the ages of 13 to 18, who are invited to solve the world’s biggest challenges using science and technology.
“I have always had a great love for chemistry since I was young. I vividly remember at the age of seven experimenting with vinegar and baking soda solutions in plastic cups,” Nirghin said in her submission, in which she cited a renowned Indian scientist as her greatest inspiration. “M S Swaminathan, has always been an inspiration of mine as he truly believed in the necessary movement of not only India but the whole world towards sustainable agricultural development.”
Nirghin found an alternative in the fruit peels to super-absorbent polymers (SAPs), which absorb and carry about 300 times its weight in liquid relative to their own mass.
“These SAPs are not biodegradable, costly and full of acrylic acid, sodium hydroxide and other chemicals. During more research in the topic, I found that natural occurring polymers exist in most citrus fruits,” Nirghin said.
After 45 days of experimentation, Nirghin was successful in creating a low-cost super-absorbent polymer, made out of waste products found in the juice manufacturing industry, that is biodegradable, can retain large amounts of water, keep soil moist and improve crop growth without regular water supplements.
“The only resources involved in the creation of the ‘orange peel mixture’ were electricity and time, with no special equipment or materials required,” she said.
Nirghin’s discovery has huge financial implications for agriculture, as her creation could retail at $30 to $60 per metric ton, as compared to the $2,000 plus costs of SAPs.
The young scientist is convinced that her mixture will help assist farmers in agricultural drought disaster areas, where food security could increase by 73 per cent.
The LEGO Education Builder Award went to the project ‘Smart Wound Care for the Future by Naiknaware, who lives in Portland.
Inspired by Marie Curie, whose work contributed to major advances in modern medicine, Naiknaware wanted to find a solution for a commonly overlooked medical problem: chronic wound care. In the US there are about 165 million injuries a year, and many of those patients suffer from chronic, larger wounds that require more complex care. Recent science shows advanced wounds need a wet environment to heal, and if dressings are changed too often, these wounds can take weeks or even months to heal. This leaves many patients susceptible to recurring infections and pain for unnecessarily long periods.
Naiknaware wanted to create a sensor that could help doctors analyze the state of a wound without removing its dressing, and after multiple iterations on her design, she created an ideal sensor design that is cheap to build and biocompatible. She believes her solution can help people suffering from chronic wounds heal more quickly, so they can get back to living life.
The Oregonian reported that Naiknaware, who is a Beaverton seventh-grader will also get a free trip to the Lego world headquarters in Denmark and a year’s worth of entrepreneurship mentoring from a Lego executive.
“The Stoller Middle School student brought some serious scientific and mathematical chops to her feel-good science project: designing and testing a bandage that is embedded with teeny tiny monitors to let medical workers “see” whether the dressing has dried out enough that it needs to be changed without having to remove it from the patient,” the report said.
Her parents, Ravi and Rahka Naiknaware, are both entrepreneurs with engineering and science backgrounds, may both accompany her to Denmark.
he’ll use the Lego mentor’s advice, she said, to figure out how to get U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for her bandages so a company can produce them at scale and patients can benefit.
Advay Ramesh won the award for his project ‘FishErmen Lifeline Terminal – FELT’.
“I have often read news articles of the troubles encountered by our Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu (state in India) fishermen. They have to stay in sea for many days to do their work. Sometimes Sri Lankan forces arrest them for crossing the International Maritime Boundary line. Location based information can provide many valuable services to these fishermen to handle these situations. In this work, I like to present few ideas in a handheld terminal (FishErmen Lifeline Terminal (FELT)) to enhance their safety and productivity using the Standard Position Services (SPS), an open service without encryption provided by Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System,” he said about his submission.
CNNMoney reported that Google CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted the teen’s invention for keeping fishermen safe at sea in an article published in The Economic Times. Ramesh then met his idol face-to-face to discuss it.
“I was very happy to talk to him about it,” said Ramesh, who shares a hometown (Chennai) with Pichai.
“Often the best innovations come from the most surprising places,” wrote Pichai. “An incredibly inventive [15-year old] just used technology to provide a potential solution to a problem that had vexed people for decades. I love seeing innovation like Advay’s coming out of India, especially from students so young.”
About a year ago, Ramesh began working on FishErmen Lifeline Terminal, also known as FELT. The small handheld device — which is only a concept for now — was designed to help fishermen in Rameswaram, a major Indian harbor near Sri Lanka.
Fishermen in the region face a unique problem — it’s not uncommon for them to inadvertently cross maritime borders in the narrow stretch of sea that separates the two countries.
With FELT, they can better track their sea routes, thanks to software built around a satellite-based navigation system, similar to GPS. The device warns them if they’re about to infringe on international borders.
Ramesh has already developed the software but work on the device is still underway.
“The device shows where the maritime boundaries are,” said Ramesh. “The green dots along the boundaries means they’re in the safe zone to fish, but they turn orange when they approach international borders.”
There are other features, too: Fishermen can track their daily fishing path and store the location of a good fishing spot for future reference. The device will also send an alert if they’re in the path of a storm.
Initially, Ramesh wanted to develop the concept as an app but ran into a challenge.
“I realized smartphones don’t always withstand the climate at sea,” he said. “I decided to create a new device.”
Ramesh, whose parents are both engineers (his father is a software developer with Nokia), has already shared his concept with a few fishermen.
Ramesh was one of five Google Community Impact Award Winners, a recognition given to young students from different countries who initiated a project that fixes a problem in their community. Ramesh was the regional winner from Asia and got to present his idea directly to Pichai.
Ramesh added: “10th grade is very important,” he said. “I want to maybe come to the U.S. to study engineering after I graduate.”
In all, two students from India and four Indian American students were selected to compete in the finals of the sixth annual ‘Google Science Fair this year.
The other teen from India was Shriank K, 15, from Bengaluru, who developed a device to aid memory with deep learning algorithms. The other three Indian Americans are: Anika Cheerla, 14; Nikhil Gopal, 15, and Nishita Belur, 13.