AsianScientist (Sep. 24, 2014) – Sixteen year old Arsh Shah Dilbagi from Panipat, India has been awarded the Google Science Fair 2014 Voter’s Choice Award. The only finalist from Asia, Dilbagi will receive a US$10,000 grant from Google to further develop his project. His win was announced live from the awards ceremony on September 22, 2014.
Dilbagi designed an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device which enables people to communicate by using their breath to spell in Morse code. Named Talk, the device converts short and long breaths of air into electrical signals that are processed into the dots and dashes of Morse code. The words are then converted to sentences or phrases and read out by a speaker.
At less than a hundred US dollars, Talk could bring AAC devices within reach of many who currently cannot afford them. After finalizing the design, Dilbagi was able to test his device on a patient with encephalopathy and Parkinson’s Disease at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi.
“The person was able to give two distinguishable signals using his breath and the device worked perfectly,” he said.
The Google Science Fair was set up in 2011 as an online science competition for teenagers. This year’s Grand Prize was won by an all-girl team from Ireland for their work on using diazotroph bacteria to enhance crop growth. Ciara Judge, Émer Hickey and Sophie Healy-Thow will enjoy a ten day trip to the Galapagos Islands with National Geographic Expeditions, a trip to the Virgin Galactic Spaceport and US$50,000 in scholarship funding.
Age category winners will receive US$25,000 in scholarship funding from Google and one year’s access to Scientific American for their school, among other prizes. Other prize categories include the Scientific American Science in Action Award which comes with US$50,000 in funding and a year’s worth of mentoring, and the Google Science Fair Computer Science Award which gives the winner US$25,000 in funding and mentoring by Google staff.
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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Google Science Fair.
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