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Shanya Gill wins top prize in Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge
The 12-year-old was awarded for her project designing a fire detection system
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Shanya Gill / (Image: Society For Science)
Indian American student Shanya Gill is among the winners of the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge (Thermo Fisher JIC), a science competition for U.S. middle-school students run by the Society for Science. San Jose-based Gill bagged the US $25,000 Thermo Fisher Scientific ASCEND (Aspiring Scientists Cultivating Exciting New Discoveries) Award, the top prize in the competition.
The 12-year-old was awarded for her project designing a fire detection system as well as the leadership, collaboration and critical thinking skills she demonstrated through the course of her research project and Finals Week challenges. The fire-detection system that she built using a wall-mounted thermal camera can send text alerts when a heat source is left unattended.
For her project she connected an affordable thermal camera to a tiny computer and programmed it to detect people as warm objects moving horizontally and heat sources, like a turned-on gas burner, as hot objects that remained still. Gill also programmed the system to send a text message when it detected a heat source but no humans for 10 minutes.
The prototype device was then mounted on the kitchen wall. The system accurately detected human presence 98 percent of the time and heat sources 97 percent of the time. “In order to deploy at a large scale, I am doing experiments where the device would be placed on the ceiling like a smoke detector,” Gillsaid.
According to press statement, Thermo Fisher JIC winners were chosen from 30 finalists. Three other Indian Americans have also bagged awards namely: Keshvee Sekhda (US $10,000 Broadcom Coding with Commitment Award; Maya Gandhi (won the US $10,000 DoD STEM Talent Award); and Adyant Bhavsar (won the US $10,000 Lemelson Award for Invention).
Dr Karen Nelson, chief scientific officer of Thermo Fisher Scientific, said, "These exceptional students are future changemakers in their chosen fields, and they are also role models for all young learners who aspire to improve society through STEM. We are honoured to celebrate their extraordinary talent and passion and look forward to seeing how their projects positively impact our world."
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