Finalists, Mentors and Judges

Today’s Innovators

Get to know the diverse personalities of students, 3M Mentors, and others who have contributed their unique talents to the 3M Young Scientist Challenge. Use the tabs below to explore exciting ideas and inspirations from previous years’ challenges.

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  • 2022
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WinnersFinalistsState Merit WinnersHonorable MentionImproving LivesMentorsJudges
2022 State Merit Winner

Aishwarya Agrawal

Vesque Method - A Watering Method to Save Water

Globally, agriculture uses 70 percent of freshwater. My goal was to help reduce the amount of water that plants need, while ensuring that the plant is still healthy. I found a method of watering that can reduce the amount of water a plant needs by 50 percent by decreasing the time that pores are open.

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2022 Finalist

Amritha Praveen

ASD Screener - Early Risk Assessment of Autism Spectrum disorder using Machine Learning

Autism is one of the most common developmental disabilities that impact social and communication skills. While there is no cure, intensive early intervention can make a big difference in the quality of life for many children

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2022 State Merit Winner

Asa Limmer

Prion Scanner

My new innovation would be to create a scanner with a programmed chip that would learn how to recogize PrP^Sc found in deer or elk in that area. As the scanner looks through the lymph nodes, obex, or tonsils, it will be going through the programmed information and if it notices the slightest trace of PrP^Sc it will mean that likely the deer has CWD.

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2022 Honorable Mention

Austin Ewing

The Automated Car Garden

Austin developed The Automated Car Garden

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2022 Finalist

Asvini Thivakaran

Piezoelectric Power Generation from Automotive Tires

Global warming, climate change, and air pollution are some of the most prevalent global issues of today. Asnavi developed the Piezoelectric Power Generation from Automotive Tires

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2022 State Merit Winner

Catherine Manley

Creating a Healthier Human Society

The Aquabot is my invention that uses thermoelectricity to condense clean drinking water out of the air without using a filtration system for people in need of clean water. It is self-sustainable and has very few parts so it will not break down easily. It is powered only by renewable resources and releases no byproducts. The Aquabot is portable and cheap to make it as accessible as possible for the people in need.

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2022 Finalist

Daniel Thomas

A Novel Dosing Pump to Prevent Clogs and Organic Overgrowth In AC Condensate Lines

Daniel developed a Novel Dosing Pump to Prevent Clogs and Organic Overgrowth In AC Condensate Lines

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2022 Honorable Mention

Delisha Manuel

Piezoelectric Roads

Delisha developed Piezoelectric Roads

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2022 State Merit Winner

Elizabeth Gill

A Dog’s Advanced Prosthetic Leg

This project is about an advanced prosthetic leg for canines that have lost one or more of their legs and need to fulfill their daily lives to their best ability.

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2022 Finalist

Harini Venkatesh

The Comptometrist: An Efficient Way to Determine Myopic Power

Harini developed The Comptometrist, a prototype designed to cut down the time needed to determine myopic power in a patient’s eyes.

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2022 State Merit Winner

Henry Martin

Mood Melodies

Seeing as there is an especially heightened amount of stress with the ongoing pandemic and other global issues, I wanted to help people manage their anxiety. This led me to create a website that can help a user cope with negative emotions via music. The site feeds data from the user’s webcam into a neural network to analyze the user’s face and determine their emotion.

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2022 State Merit Winner

Iraj Shroff

Smart Trash Can

Plastic poses a serious threat to the environment and wildlife. Over 8.3 billion metric tons of trash is added to landfills globally, out of which 6.3 billion metric tons is plastic waste. 79% of plastic waste is accumulating in landfills or littered in our environment, and very little is recycled. Plastic pollution will double by 2030.

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2022 Honorable Mention

Isha Joshi

Tracking Parkinson’s Symptoms and Stages with HandPD Dataset in a Mobile App

Isha developed Tracking Parkinson’s Symptoms and Stages with HandPD Dataset in a Mobile App

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2022 State Merit Winner

James Yu

Origami-Based Disaster-Relief Deployable Shelters

I designed an emergency disaster-relief shelter. This structure is a deployable pop-up shelter and is made of cardboard, providing victims of natural disasters who have lost shelter with temporary, affordable, portable, accessible, and recyclable shelter. The structure has a compact stowed configuration and a spacious deployed position.

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2022 Finalist

John Lee

A Novel MoS2 Electrode for Enhancing Electrochemical Hydrogen Production

Hydrogen (H2) can improve energy consumption by producing an alternative energy source to carbon-based fuels.

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2022 State Merit Winner

Kaavya Tatavarty

Hear Me Out - Hyper-personalized Speech Recognition and Synthesis for the Speech Impaired

Imagine how you would feel if your mind was bursting with ideas but your mouth was struggling to let them out. This problem is all too familiar for 7.5 million people in the United States and 18.5 million people around the world who struggle with speech disabilities. In fact, 1 out of 12 children in the United States deals with some speech impairment, many of them stemming from conditions like down-syndrome, child apraxia of speech, or types of muscular dystrophy.

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2022 State Merit Winner

Katherine Webb

Converting Sound into Electricity

The Conversion of Sound Waves to Electricity. Dynamic microphones mounted on street lamps on highways capture the sound waves of passing cars. Sound waves are mechanical waves, meaning they affect the matter the travel through, so when they enter the magnetic field inside the dynamic microphone an electrical current is induced into the conductive wire.

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2022 State Merit Winner

Kriesh Tivare

Nifty Nanogenerators! - Electricity Generation Using Triboelectricity

Over the years, hundreds of tons of carbon have been emitted into the atmosphere due to causes such as nonrenewable energy sources. Carbon Emissions have had a toll on the Earth and will eventually be irreversible.

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2022 State Merit Winner

Lam Le

Fish flakes from plastic

Every day approximately 1369 tons of styrofoam are buried in U.S Landfills. Thirty percent of the world’s landfills are styrofoam. Styrene is classified as a carcinogen by the EPA and yet we still use it every day. Used Styrofoam cannot be recycled into new styrofoam. However, the larvae of certain darkling beetles(mealworms, super worms) can eat styrofoam.

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2022 Winner

Leanne Fan

Finsen Headphones: Treating Mid-Ear Infections Using Machine Learning and Phototherapy

Leanne developed the Finsen Headphones: Treating Mid-Ear Infections Using Machine Learning and Phototherapy

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2022 State Merit Winner

Luka Nguyen

NOMADS Nutrient Optimized Mangrove Drop Sheath for Aerial Reforestation

Mangroves are being threatened. They are essential to life. NOMADS Nutrient optimized Mangrove Drop sheath is an invention made to protect a red mangrove propagule during UAV aerial reforestation. They are made from molded pulp and shaped to embed in the mud and protect young mangrove plants dropped from drones during aerial reforestation.

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2022 State Merit Winner

Maya Trutschl

Microcontroller-Driven Remote HVAC Monitoring System for a Greener Planet

The computer revolution over the past few decades has followed the laws predicted by Gordon Moore, who in 1965 observed that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Making these devices smaller and more accessible, combined with open-source code opened a whole new world for enthusiasts and professionals alike.

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2022 State Merit Winner

Nosrat Montaha

UMT

This is a project I’ve nicknamed UMT that has the potential to provide a new method of sterilizing milk that can be available widespread to those in need.

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2022 State Merit Winner

Parker Welsh

Clean Coal Energy System

In my project, I solved how to use bacteria to absorb carbon dioxide emissions produced by coal power plants while also producing additional electricity. First CO2 is absorbed by the Chlorobaculum Tepidum. C. Tepidum then releases extracellular ATP which can be put through hydrolysis producing electricity.

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