Students make an international mark

Visakhapatnam: Two teams from Visakhapatnam, trained by coding4kids Private Ltd, a start-up, has made the country proud at British International Education Association (BIEA) STEM youth innovation contest at Royal Air Force Museum, London, UK. The young coders made the city proud by bagging Champion Award, Best Display Award, second runner-up award and Best Report Award.

A team of seven enthusiastic coders competed with a total of 30,000 teams who took part in the international competition from across 38 countries. Of which, 45 teams from 18 countries were shortlisted as finalists and only three teams were selected for the finals from India -one team from Bengaluru and two teams from Visakhapatnam.

The theme of the competition was centred on concepts: 'technological innovation and conservation of endangered animal species: 'Fighting extinction' using Drone Technologies.

The teams were named as Imaginators and M16. The team Imaginators was the junior group (age 9 to 11) consisted of team members Sashil Maddila, Mohammed Rayaan and Aarnav Reddy Nerla of Silver oaks International school. This team bagged Champion Award and Best Display Award.

The senior team MI6 (age 14 to 17) consisting of team members Sreya Allada, Smyan Tez Vankayalapati, Sri Harsh Saraswathula and Jahnavi Movva from Visakha Valley School bagged second runner-up prize and Best Report Award.

The teams were coached under the expert guidance of Nagashilpa Seethamraju, founder and CEO of Coding4kids Pvt Ltd and supported by Silpa Mannepalli, Director (Operations) of the start-up. In this competition, Nagashilpa Seethamraju won the Best Instructor Award.

Talking about the concept Nagashilpa, says "The International STEM Youth Innovation Competition is for the students under the age of 18, organised by BIEA which aims to raise the level of technological enthusiasm among students from all over the world. The competition is held every summer with a new theme picked every year."

Sharing his experience, Shashil Maddila, a Class VI student, says, "It was really difficult for me to cope with school examination and project as it was hecitc. The competition was quite fierce over there as the kids from other countries brought huge drones with better features and we were pretty apprehensive about standing out.

We chose an endangered species Pangolin because most of the people do not know about it and only hunt it for meat and scales. Their scales are used in traditional Chinese medicines and the meat is considered as a delicacy in Vietnam."

When asked about the drone mechanism Aarnav Reddy Nerla, another Class VI, adds, "The drone is shaped like an eagle so that Pagolin doesn't shy away and our drone was different because it made of papers glues and cameras and raspberry pi and the other drones had advanced features."

Even the senior team was quite apprehensive about making it till the end. "All of us were really scared as there was team representing China. They came up with a well modified drone and we had just a basic model," says Sreya Allada from Visakha Valley School.

She further adds "Later when the competition started we got to know that our drone was close to reality but the other drones were far from reality. Our drone had more programming, nitrogen cameras and we chose Red Panda because many people do not know about it and it's the habitat at Eastern Himalayas."

When asked about team coordination, she adds, "It took us a month to do research and work on a 25-mark report. It was really hard to cooperate with the rest as we had our share of fights and disagreements till the end. But we made it as the judges were quite impressed with our concept"

Finalists from the competition showed their works at the Big Bang London Science and Innovation Exhibition held in Kingsway College in Westminster, UK on 3rd July, 2019. Being part of the Final of the competition, these finalists have attracted many International science and technology innovation experts and scholars, as well as well-known science and technology enterprises and institutions.

-Debalina Talukdar