Congratulations to our Fellow InvenTeams!

Congratulations to the InvenTeams of Natick High School and Newton North High School on their achievements this year and their invitation to the White House Science Fair. It's always exciting to see other InvenTeams making the news, and we wish them the best of luck!


(Sections from the press release)

"Students from Natick High School and Newton North High School, both in Massachusetts, will travel to the fourth White House Science Fair to showcase their Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam projects to President Obama on Tuesday, May 27. The students will join more than 100 other students from around the country selected to participate in the event, which recognizes winners from a broad range of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) competitions.

The White House Science Fair fulfills a commitment the President made at the launch of his Educate to Innovate campaign in November 2009 - to inspire boys and girls to excel in math and science. The President noted at the start of this program, “If you win the NCAA championship, you come to the White House. Well, if you're a young person and you produce the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too.” 

The students from Natick and Newton North are honored for their achievements as 2012-2013 Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam grant recipients from the Lemelson-MIT Program. The InvenTeam initiative inspires young people to pursue creative lives and careers through invention. InvenTeams are granted up to $10,000 each to conceptualize, design and build technological solutions to real-world problems. 

Katelyn Sweeney and Olivia Van Amsterdam will represent the Natick High School InvenTeam. The team developed a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for ice search and rescue dive teams. The land vehicle will quickly traverse the ice and lower a submersible detection device, which will assist a dive team when searching for objects or bodies in dangerously cold waters with temperatures of 33 – 45°F. Katelyn and Olivia have been instrumental in the filing of a U.S. utility patent for their device.  Felege Gebru and Karen Cheuk-Wing Fan will represent the Newton North High School InvenTeam. The team developed a pedestrian alert system to be used in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to alert crossing pedestrians of approaching vehicles, increasing pedestrian safety. Felege shared his firsthand knowledge of the dangers that pedestrians encounter in his home country of Ethiopia and the InvenTeam has partnered with a sister school in Ethiopia to inform their understanding of the problem and guide the design. "