A team of Shelton middle schoolers won an international contest Monday that will see them featured on a national TV show about inventors.
Oh, and they’ll get $250,000 worth of advice from experts in developing their idea and bringing it to market.
The team won the prize, the First Lego League’s Global Innovation Award, for inventing the “Smart Sticker,” an innovative solution to protect consumers from contaminated eggs. They were joint winners with a team from Dublin, Ohio who came up with a similar idea.
The two groups beat out competition from more than 250 other teams from 13 countries to take the prize, John Niski, the team’s adviser, told the Valley Indy from Washington Wednesday.
Click here to see a video from Tuesday’s ceremony.
Niski’s son, Joseph, a 14-year-old who graduated from Shelton Intermediate School this year, said the team was thrilled when the award was announced Tuesday morning during a ceremony at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Va.
“It was one of the best feelings in the world,” Joseph said. “It felt like 1,000 pounds were taken off my chest. You just felt like you could do anything. It was the most amazing feeling.”
Joseph said he and the rest of the team — Victoria O’Malley, Aravind Ravishankar, Sejal Bhargava, David Dzujna, Keyur Shah, and Raj Ganjikunta — are looking forward to being featured on “Everyday Edisons“, a PBS reality show that follows the stories of inventors bringing their products to market.
They’re also looking forward to taking their idea from the drawing board to reality.
“We’re really excited to produce the Smart Sticker and actually create a working prototype,” he said.
Click here to read a description of the “Smart Sticker” from the competition website.
A video about the team’s invention is posted below. Article continues after the video.
Basically, the “Smart Sticker” is an indicator sticker on the outside of refrigerated food packaging (eggs) that indicates with a green sticker if the food product has been kept at the correct temperature during its transportation and storage.
Joseph said the idea came to team members in the fall, when the power outages caused by Hurricane Irene and the October snowstorm were fresh in their minds.
“One of the kids on our team, Raj (Ganjikunta), did some research and found some thermo-coolant crystals that change color with temperature,” Joseph recalled. “He contacted the company that makes them and talked to them and was able to figure out they could change from green to red when (the eggs) go above 45 degrees and not change back.”
A contingent of about 30 team members, relatives, and officials went to the awards ceremony Monday, Niski said, including Board of Education Chairman Win Oppel, who sent the Valley Indy the picture above.
“This is a great testament to the quality of the students we have in the Shelton public school system and teachers that are dedicated to their learning,” Oppel said in an e‑mail. “We are very proud of the accomplishments of these students.”
The team went into Monday’s event knowing that the Ohio team had produced a similar idea to theirs and didn’t know what to expect, Niski said. “We kind of figured it was going to come down to either of us.”
When the grand prize was announced, he said, “It was mayhem.”
“We have been preparing and anticipating and hoping, but to actually hear them say it was just unbelievable to hear,” he went on. “And then to start to think about all the things that are going to happen next is just a whirlwind of excitement.”
The team will now work with Edison Nation, a company that provides help to aspiring inventors, to develop the product.
Mary Dickson, a spokeswoman at the company, said Wednesday that the students will now meet with engineers at the company to take their idea forward.
“They’ll look at the ideas, do conceptual research into the product, and market research,” she said. “They will road-map the development process from there in terms of the best path to market.”
