A few weeks ago we interviewed 2009-2010 Spirit of Innovation Award winners Shannon and Mikayla Diesch, who developed a granola bar, named the Solar Flare, to meet the specific needs of NASA’s astronauts. This years SOIA competition has been going on for awhile now and the 27 finalist teams have recently been announced.
Competing in three categories; Aerospace Exploration, Clean Energy and Cyber Security, the remaining high-school teams from the US and UK will present their products to industry experts, scientists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists April 28 through May 1, 2011. The presentation and final selection will take place at NASA’s Ames Research Center where overall winners will be selected from each category based on technical content and commercial viability. The winners will receive a “Next Step Grant” that can be used to begin moving forward with their innovative product.
Below you’ll find a full list of the finalist teams that says where they are from and gives a brief description of the product they have submitted to the competition.
Aerospace Finalist Teams
Lennox Aerospace
Douglas, Isle of Man, Great Britain
Space Scaffold Structure-1 (SSS-1): The SSS-1 is a innovative, simple, cost-effective space structure, it allows efficient, co-operative structures to be made in space that can have many uses. The design is made from a simple cube and cuboid interlocking design that allows quick and safe construction of space stations, space colonies, hotels or research facilities.
Morpeus
Durham, North Carolina
Space Sleep Pod: The sleeping pod would replace current sleeping fixtures aboard spacecrafts and provide noiselessness, comfort, lighting, and privacy towards a more effective and better sleeping experience for astronauts in space.
MVNTHS Beta
Cupertino, California
BeIN Aptamer Implant: This implant utilizes the traits of Aptamers to inhibit the fibronectin protein to treat long-term diseases caused by exposure to microgravity.
Ouroboros
The Perpetual Harvest Space Nutrition System: The Perpetual Harvest Space Nutrition System takes organic waste created during a long duration space mission and turns it into compost that is then used to grow crops. These crops serve as an air filter and food supply for the crew.
PVA
Durham, North Carolina
Polyvinyl Alcohol Shield: We have developed a product, a polyvinyl alcohol polymer film, that has shown through experimentation to protect from cosmic rays and x-rays. This will ultimately help make space travel and occupation safer for astronauts, who are exposed daily to high doses of cosmic rays.
Star (Space Technology Research)
Los Angeles, California
Augmented Reality System: A headset that monitors vital signs, and the position of the user constantly and provides the user with that information quickly and reliably.
Unis In Space
Durham, North Carolina
Solar Wind Power Generator: The Solar Wind Power Generator is a cost-effective, high-energy output power supply for future lunar development and deep space exploration utilizing electron flow from Solar Wind from the Sun.
Clean Energy Finalists Teams
Air-Ease
Montezuma Creek, Utah
Solar Fan: The Solar Fan will provide free cooling breezes using the power of the sun.
BEHD
Alexandria, Viginia
Bacteria Energy Harvesting Device (BEHD)Description: The BEHD extracts energy from everyday trash and converts it into electricity.
CIRPSICSR
Alexandria, Virginia
ULTRApod: The ULTRApod is an underwater unit that uses turbines to harness hydrokinetic energy from a flowing river; electricity generated by the turbines is then used to power an ultraviolet chamber that disinfects and purifies the dirty river water. Put simply, the ULTRApod uses the river to clean the river.
Green Bacon:
Charlottesville, Virginia
Solar Hybrid Lighting System: Our product uses natural sunlight to reduce the energy consumption for lighting purposes by acting as a lighting supplement.
Helios:
Cupertino, California
Viridis: Viridis is based around the low temperature Stirling engine, utilizing the technology of a parabolic mirror. With the use of a readjustment system, as well as a generator at the end, this product will ensure maximum efficiency when producing electricity.
Kinergy
Patrick, Isle of Man, British Isles
Kinergy Wristband: The Kinergy Band is a mobile phone or mp3 player charger that runs purely off kinetic energy transferred while walking.
Los Altos Academy of Engineering
Hacienda Heights, California
Location Green: is a property that has the most modern green technology, including a gray water system, skylights, solar panels, wind turbines, and rain gutters.
Pe-U IOM
Douglas, Isle of Man, British Isles
The Pe-U concept: is a systematic design that uses innovative, eco-friendly portable toilets made from entirely recycled materials to create clean energy. These toilets are distributed in rapid production lines to both consumer festival markets and disaster zones and once the toilets have fulfilled their temporary use, they are disposed of into biodigestive systems to create clean, renewable methane fuel energy and rich organic fertiliser.
Solar Cookout
Montezuma Creek, Utah
The SOLAR COOKOUT Portable Parabolic Stove: is a Large diameter parabolic dish solar concentrator capable of extremely high temperatures. It allows you to cook any food the same as you would using a burner on your stove indoors.
Team SPEAD
Durham, North Carolina
SPEAD (Solar Powered Energy And Distillation): aims to generate electricity using solar heated water, while also distilling and disinfecting the water.
The PAGEboys
North Carolina
PiezoStem: Transduction device that converts wind energy to electrical energy via piezoelectric film.
West Philly EVX Team
West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Electric Very Light Car: West Philadelphia High School students building a market-ready electric car to set the standard for efficiency for years to come.
Z00mb33z
Montezuma Creek, Utah
Solar Charging Kiosk: will use solar panels to maintain the charge on deep cycle lead acid batteries which will be used to charge small electronic devices like MP3 players and cell phones. The Solar Charging Kiosk will be targeted for sponsorship by soft drink manufacturers and will be shaped like a giant soda can.
Cyber Security Finalist Teams
Infiniti Cyber Security
Houston, Texas
Intelliscan: Our product is a security application for the iPhone which defends against malicious threats targeted towards users through smart filtering and real-time shielding.
Lambda 2.4
Alexandria, Viginia
DroidShepherd is a tool for the Android Mobile Platform that provides the capability to detect and disable 'Firesheep' session sidejacking attempts on public Wi-Fi networks. By strategically sending out fake and random data and listening for a response, DroidShepherd will effectively combat hacking efforts that operate by stealing authenticated session cookies.
Los Altos Academy of Engineering
Hacienda Heights, California
ShadowVigil is a Smartphone application that provides offline safety mechanisms through the use of satellite thermal images.
R Squared
Beverly Hills, California
Dependable Ride is a mobile application that allows users to send a notification to all nearby friends alerting them of their need for a safe mode of transportation. It will allow users to easily get rides from nearby friends.
SARA (Sexual Assault Response Application)
Durham, North Carolina
S.A.R.A. is a multi-platform smartphone application that is designed to respond to cases of sexual assault. It accomplishes this by autonomously contacting emergency services and by gathering information valuable to the prosecution by using the microphone, GPS locator, and video camera data accessible from a smartphone.
Scientifica White Hats
Durham, North Carolina
The Phone Guard is an all?in?one master security system for smartphones. With a small fee of only $10 for the app, the PhoneGuard uses face recognition, finger print size recognition, average finger tap recognition, gps coordination alerts, ed flag alerts, Bluetooth filtration, and spam, call, and text prevention to make it the most demanded security product.
UniSecurity
Durham, North Carolina
MedPAL is a smartphone application that works in conjunction with a Bluetooth enabled heart rate monitor worn by the user. In response to irregularities in heart rate, MedPAL will automatically contact a call center and/or personal emergency contacts based on GPS coordinates, as well as alerting those in the vicinity verbally and displaying important medical information.
If you would like to voice your opinion regarding the entries in this year's Spirit of Innovation Awards you will soon have that opportunity. Beginning April 13th, the finalist teams will be submitting videos about their products that the public can vote on to help select this year's People's Choice Award. Anyone interested will be able to watch the videos and vote online at the Conrad Awards website!
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