Students from Makati, Bataan, Leyte win innovation prize
Date published: April 16, 2017
A smart hydropower-generator device that aims to lessen the school’s electric bill. An intelligent imaging management system that monitors local pedestrian and road situation. A water-level rise alert system that seeks to reinforce disaster mitigation and warning system protocols in a Supertyphoon Yolanda-struck community.
What’s common in these three technologies?
They are not products of expert scientists or engineers—at least not yet—but of young high-school students from Makati, Bataan and Leyte.
These brilliant students also happen to be the first-ever recipients of the Youth Innovation Prize in the recently concluded “imake.wemake: create. innovate. collaborate.” competition of the Department of Science and Technology-Science Education Institute (DOST-SEI).
In the recent final presentation of projects and awarding ceremony, Philippine Science High School-Eastern Visayas Campus’s (PSHS-EVC)“Water Rise Alert System”, Pitogo High School’s (PHS) “Project Iris, or Intercepting Relayed Imaging System” and Limay National High School’s (LNHS) “Project Maxima: Hydropower Generator” emerged on top of nine other technologies from the same number of team finalists. The event was held at the Henry Sy Sr. Innovation Center, Miriam College, Quezon City.
LNHS’s Jonel Mark Carandang, Aureen Kyle I. Mandap and Kenneth Legaspi developed their hydropower-generator device, Maxima, to provide their school an extra clean source of energy to help lessen its electrical bills. Their device is equipped with liquid-level, temperature, current and water-flow sensors, steel foundations, batteries, a 500-watt electric inverter/converter, an improvised rotary generator and many others. The actual project cost was only P6,398.
PHS’s Daveren John Cordero, Steven Da-anton and Jose Gabrielle Rivera developed an automatic surveillance system they called as Iris, which can detect cars that step inside the pedestrian lane when the traffic light goes red, helping authorities track the frequency of this type of violation every day and act accordingly. The trio conducted software and hardware developments for Iris, which only cost them P7,582.
Meanwhile Kent Marc Kobe Bismark, Johan Castillejos and John Ejie Relente of PSHS-EVC made use of their experience during Yolanda to develop their Water Rise Alert System. It is a device powered with a water-level sensor, a radio frequency-transmission unit, alarms, a raindrop detector, some lights for danger signaling and solar panels, that measures water levels in prone areas and transmit data to a control center to give warnings to residents.
The three projects impressed the judges composed of professors from the University of the Philippines Diliman’s Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute, and Emerson Philippines, a major sponsor in the project.
SEI Director Dr. Josette Biyo congratulated the winners, as well as the finalists, for their impressive ideas and creations.
“The quality of projects we collected in this activity is very promising. Young students like you certainly have great ideas, and it’s exciting to look forward to our future, when you have more resources and competencies to turn your ideas into great technologies, products or big-time programs,” she said.
The imake.wemake project, which was launched in 2016, sought to unleash the creativity of students in Grades 10 and 11 through the process of innovation. Teams were asked to pitch project proposals about an invention or a technological solution to any problems they encounter in their respective communities such as traffic, garbage, flooding and the like.
Such technologies should be powered by a smart microprocessor called Intel Galileo Board II, funded by Emerson Philippines.
A total of 19 proposals were screened, 13 of which moved on to the Project Pitch phase held in December last year. All 13 schools received a training kit and units of Intel Galileo boards to utilize. After two months of developing, testing and validating their technologies, nine finalists presented their projects in the last phase.
“We hope this is a first of many as there is surely no shortage of ideas from our young kids. This is an important platform for us to urge them to innovate,” Biyo remarked. S&T Media Service.
Source: Business Mirror