Press Releases
Image courtesy of Sergi Kabrera
March 12, 2023
Hawai’i Island Youth Win Prizes at Hawaii Island STEM Competition
HILO, March 12, 2023 — The Success Factory - NexTech Hawai’i held its third annual STEM event – FishTank Design Competition - on March 4. The event, held at UH Hilo’s Sciences and Technology Building, was well attended by families and local business, government, and business leaders.
The event was the culmination of an eleven-week effort where ten teams of Hawai’i Island students identified local sustainability problems and developed solution concepts to address these challenges. The team had, as a learning backdrop, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). NexTech provided the teams with training on several relevant topics – engineering design process, systems thinking, lifecycle analysis, general problem solving, and story-telling presentation skills. Over 35 Subject Matter Experts also supported them.
Five teams made it to the Finals on March 4, where they pitched their ideas to a panel of judges and a live audience, just like in the hit TV show Shark Tank. The teams included:
Team Lava Alert Squad (First Place) – arrived at a comprehensive emergency alert system, including optimization of Civil Defense sirens and processes and a web-based solution for centralized emergency response data. This team of Kau girls included: Ellianna Seaver, Kiran Seaver, and Luka Doherty. They won $3,500 for their First Place, Best Teamwork, Most Inspirational, and Best Idea awards.
Team Potato Batteries (Second Place) - arrived at a customizable and scalable portable renewable energy system, including system configuration software. The team included Gavin Wagner, Anwar Genz, Rayaan Genz, and Andrew Woolverton. They won $2,200 for their Second Place and Best Technical Notebook award.
Team Wednesday (Third Place) - They pitched a biogas digester designed to convert food waste into fuel and compost. They included Daniel Robinson, Banyan Pensa, and Makani Pensa. They won $1,600 for their Third Place and People’s Choice award.
Team HI Five Carpool Kids – Sophia Mari Morin Canico and Isabela Mari Morin Canico – pitched a local ride-sharing app designed to enable transportation equity and reduce congestion and transportation emissions.
Team Mechaneers – Connor Cairns and Hayden Takiue – pitched a self-powered emergency and disaster relief system.
The competition judges included Jake Sykes of the County of Hawaii, Kevin Waltjen and Kristen Okinaka of Hawaiian Electric, and Laura Assum-Dahleen of SSFM. In addition to the final pitches, they assessed each team’s engineering notebooks, reports, and recorded presentations.
Hawaii County Council Chair Heather Kimball offered the audience an inspiring keynote that offered a hopeful contrast to the prevalent negative climate news. She brilliantly built on a quote from the musical Hamilton: “Look around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now.”
Mayor Mitch Roth presented the winning teams with their awards and congratulated them. He also acknowledged the various actions taken by our communities to address several important sustainability challenges. He praised all of the teams for their efforts.
Kristine Kubat, Executive Director of Recycle Hawaii, congratulated teams and contributed to the cash prizes offered to each team.
When asked why they chose SDG 17 - Partnerships for the Goal, winning Team LAS said “...so we can team all of these people and organizations together to work for one goal.” This was apropos to the essence of our event which was made possible through the volunteer efforts of the NexTech Hawaii team, parents, and leaders in government, business, technology, and engineering, and funding by the Hawaii Community Foundation and Koi Pond Initiative.
FishTank Design Competition is an annual event sponsored by The Success Factory, a grassroots 501(c)(3) non-profit that serves as an economic development initiative by inspiring and building STEM career readiness through NexTech STEM Programs for Hawaii Island youth.