Bengaluru: While lakes in Bengaluru catching fire continue to be burning issue, a school student from the city has won international laurels for an innovative solution to the problem.
Vikhyath Mondreti, a class 10 student along with his transnational team won in the Biodiversity category at the innovation challenge hosted by the New York Academy of Sciences as part of their Junior Academic Program. The team had made their way through as the winner for their solution named H2nOde, excelling over 90 other teams coming in from 51 different countries.
“The persistent problem that we have been facing with the lakes in the city left me thinking which led to this project. The miserable condition when read along with lack of proper monitoring and my interest to work with the STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) model paved way to such a project,” Vikhyath told Deccan Chronicle.
The youngsters’ innovation uses a drone and sensor network combination as a practical and scalable solution to monitor even larger water bodies by collecting mass chunks of data with cloud-based technologies coming into aid. The absence of reasonable steps to collect data, said Vikhyath, was one of the pioneering observations he acquired from experts which led the team work for a scalable solution. He added that data from Kaikondrahalli and Varthur lakes was collected during the experiment.
Comparing the condition of water bodies in the city with similar observations made by his teammates during the course of study in the United States, the budding scientist asserted that the situation abroad was not any different. “Nearly 46% of the water bodies at the US are unfit for aquatic life and swimming. Even then, our lakes catching fire of toxic froth was news for the attendees of the event,” he said citing the award-winning study.
Vikhyath is looking forward to pursue his higher education in data science at the US after completing the International Baccalaureate (IB) in the city. The youngster is now planning to hold talks with government officials and departments concerned in the city to discuss how the novel solution can be implemented.
“We hope that such initiatives will create the next generation of scientific leaders who will be able to work together to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems,” said Niru Agarwal, Trustee, Greenwood High International School.
