A 13-year-old girl from Odisha won the 2015 Google Science Fair, 'The Community Impact' Award on Monday, September 21 hosted by Google in Mountain View, California in partnership with the Scientific American that sponsored the Community Impact award, LEGO Education, National Geographic and Virgin Galactic.
Lalita Prasida Sripada Srisai (pictured left), a 9th grader at the Delhi Public School in Damanjodi, Odisha received $10,000 and will get a year of mentoring from Scientific American for her project that makes a practical difference in the community by addressing an environmental, health or resources challenge.
Her project, 'Low Cost Bio- Adsorbent' aims to clean waste water by flowing through different layers of Corn cobs which is a cost-effective and simple technique of cleaning water.
She uses corn cobs in her project.
Corn cobs, she says, are useful for immobilising the contaminants in domestic and industrial effluents, and in ponds, reservoirs and water tanks as well.
Her experiment (diagram below) shows that Corn cobs could clean water up to 70 to 80 per cent because they are suitable adsorbents and have high mechanical strength, rigidity and porosity.
Started five years ago the Google Science Fair is a an annual globalonline competition for students ages 13 to 18, and honours a project that makes a practical difference in a community by addressing anenvironmental, health or resources challenge.
The grand Google Science Fair prize of $50,000 was won by an Americanstudent Olivia Hallisey, 16 to detect Ebola.
Also partners of annual Google Science Fair Awards are LEGO Education, National Geographic and Virgin Galactic and offer mentoring to the winners year round.
Anurudh Ganesan (left), 15, of United States, won the Lego Education Builder award.
The award is given to a student who uses an innovative, hands-on approach to solve some of the greatest engineering challenges.
His project titled 'Vaxxwagon: An Innovative eco-friendly No Ice, Noelectric, active refrigeration system for last-leg vaccine transportation' is about vaccine transportation to remote locations that requires both ice-packs and electricity which is a major problem in developing countries.
His existing prototype costs less than $100.
He has also applied for its patent and was placed 3rd at National Geography Bee in Maryland.
Ganesan will travel the LEGO Group headquarters in Billund, Denmark and will have access to work with a LEGO Education executive for six months as a mentor to learn how to launch a business and the art of entrepreneurship.
Deepika Kurup (left), 17, of United States won the National Geographic Explorer Award given to a a project in the natural sciences.
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