Odisha School Students Among Top Winners of National Innovation Foundation Award 2018
Report by Jagpreet Luthra , Delhi: It takes an orthopedic to say the serious health hazard that is a slippery bathroom floor. But it takes a sensitive child with a scientific temper to invent a “Bathroom Fall Alert” and to ensure that family help is on hand before the orthopedic steps in. Two students of Khurda’s B J English medium school, Kiran Choudhury and Adaysha P Rath, have won this year’s Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam IGNITE competition, a national competition of original technological ideas and innovations. Dasmath Murmu of the the Kalinga School of Social Science is the third child, again from Khurda, Odisha, to win the award for a “Doorbell-Triggered Vibration Alert in the Bed Pillow”.
After Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, with five and four winners respectively, Odisha school children rank third among the 11 states where students have won.
These three children are among the 90,000 students who took part in the competition organised by the Gujarat-based National Innovation Foundation (NIF) for children up to class 12 or those out of school up to the age of 17 years. The award aims to promote creativity and originality among children. The 31 winners of the competition were announced on October 15, late President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam’s birthday. The awards will be given on November 17, which is celebrated as the Children’s Creativity and Innovation Day by NIF. Former President Pranab Mukherjee will give the awards at a function in Gandhinagar where an exhibition, showcasing the innovations, will also be held.
Students from 643 districts of all the States and Union Territories of India participated during the competition that ran from September 1, 2017 to August 31, 2018. NIF organises the award in association with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Honey Bee Network among other partners.
NIF, an autonomous body of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, has been actively engaged in promoting creativity and innovation. It has taken major initiatives to serve the knowledge-rich but economically poor people of the country. A press release of NIF says, it is committed to making India innovative–by documenting, adding value, protecting the intellectual property rights (IPR) of the contemporary unaided technological innovators as well as of outstanding traditional knowledge-holders, and disseminating their innovations on commercial and non- commercial basis.
The award is also an effort to promote inclusive and compassionate thinking among students, says NIF. The following award-winning innovations show that NIF is living it up: Visually challenged friendly navigation facilitation system, assistive spectacles for the deaf with voice-to- text conversion and display feature,
innovative and low cost bed with detachable wheel chair, shock-absorbing stretcher and animal carcass picking machine.