2019 YESIST – Age of Innovation

The United Nations has identified seventeen Sustainable Development Goals for creating awareness on the proper utilization of resources and creating awareness on the responsibility of the people in preserving these resources.  IEEE YESIST12 (Youth Endeavors for Social Innovation Using Sustainble Technology) 2019 – Age of Innovation is an International Talent Show organised on the themes of these Sustainable Development Goals with the purpose of creating awareness to the younger generation on the Goals and providing a platform for them to discuss their ideas with competitive minds around the world. This year the challenge recognized the best social innovation application on the theme “PREPARING FOR FUTURE: SUSTAINABLE TRANSFORMATIVE TECHNOLOGIES” related to:

  • Uplifting societal standards
  • National Resource management and protection
  • Women and children safety
  • Special Needs and healthcare
  • Disaster prediction and risk management
  • Geographical and space science

The International Project Competition was held at Stamford International University, Hua Hin, Thailand on 7 and 8 September. The event was organised with the support of various IEEE Societies, the Rotary Club, and the World Bank this year. There were 43 pilots around the world and the competition had five different tracks – Innovation Challenge, Maker Fair, Junior Einstein, WePOWER and Virtual Track.

Maker Fair

A Maker Fair is a celebration of innovators, makers, doers coming together to showcase their products to the local community. The Maker Fair track is organized to help the students display their technical skills and team work. Abstracts will be called and evaluated for their social usefulness and ability to be converted into a product. Mr.Navaneethakrishnan Ramanathan chaired the track.

  • Teams from seven countries participated in the Maker Fair track, where two parallel juries evaluated the teams. The jury members were Dr. Diana Martinez from Spain, Dr. Nirmala from India, Mr. Sourja Sankar Sen from Thailand, Mr.Pierre Bourgoin from Australia, Dr.Worapan Chanthappan from USA, and Dr. Shamim Anovar from Bangladesh.

Based on the evaluation, the winner, runner up and 3 honourable mentions were selected.

POSITION PROJECT TITLE
Winner Imbalance Regulator
Runner-up Sensor Based Monitoring Of Urban City Waste Water
Honorary Mention Adjustable Standing Frame With Activity Trainer
Honorary Mention Low Temperature Operating Scr For Emission Reduction
Honorary Mention Vision It
Honorary Mention Smart Helmet For All Weather Conditions

The Junior Einstein Track focused on encouraging the school students of age 12 – 17 years to explore their innovative ideas. In this track, 25 teams with around 100 students competed in the final round. The winner of the Junior Einstein track was awarded with a cash prize of $1,000 USD and the runner-up received $500 USD. Two other teams who won honorable mentions received $100 USD.

The winning project, “Smart Windows,” presented windows automated to open or close in response to weather and climatic conditions, such as sun or rain. They are also programmed with safety features in case of smoke or fire inside the building. The runner-up team developed a prototype for military security called “Smart Security System.” The model is designed to protect a military secret room using sensors to prevent Uri attacks and has a remote controlled RC gun along with a smart helmet that can be used by soldiers to detect attacks from behind. Honorable mentions were given to two teams – one that displayed a prototype of an atmospheric water generator that extracts water from humid air based on the principle of condensation of air before its dew point. The other project was an innovative automatic cleaner for water tanks.

WePOWER

The World Bank Group on Energy and Extractives recently started “South Asia Gender and Energy” (SAGE) initiative with a plan to establish a “Women in Power Sector Network in South Asia (WePOWER)” to promote women engineers and practitioners in the energy and power sector, and bring normative change regarding women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education.

WePOWER track was introduced in YESIST12 this year to promote women engineers with an electrical background to work on projects aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It was the first of its kind conducted exclusively for women globally. The goal behind such an initiative is to uplift the female community and encourage them to pursue a career in the Power and Energy sector, with the aim of contributing to a cleaner and greener Earth.

The Track witnessed good amount of female participation and some great innovative ideas, including IoT enabled Power Theft Control, Electricity Generation from Sea Weeds, Advanced Health Monitoring System for Autistic Patients, Smart Gas Leakage Detector, Smart Sanitary Pad Disposal, etc. The projects used advanced technologies and showed promise in having a direct positive impact on the respective local communities. We had submissions from India, Philippines, Kenya, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand. This indicates a remarkable global reach we have achieved for a track in its first year of introduction. For the coming years, we expect to have even more participation.