October 2009

An idea changed her life

October 21, 2009


Ahmedabad: Is your cell's battery life too short? Are you charging your cell too often thereby increasing your electricity bill? But now you can probably charge your cell using your own pulse. This might sound impossible! No longer, if this Delhi's girl's idea gets implemented.

Sarojini Mahajan, a fifteen-year-old school girl's idea hooked up the fancy of Stanford University, which will now partner with the National Innovation Foundation of India (NIF) to foster and develop the idea further.

Paul Kim, Assistant Dean and Chief Technology Officer at Stanford and Prof Anil Gupta, NIF executive vice-chairperson together assured to develop this idea into reality.

Prof. Gupta, who teaches at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) said, "$1,000 has already been pledged into the project as a symbolic initiation".

The class 9 student at St Mark's Senior Secondary School, Meera Bagh, first had a tête-à-tête with her teacher in class in July, and subsequently registered herself for the IGNITE '09, NIF's innovative ideas competition for school children across India.

The results of the competition were declared recently and she bagged a consolation prize, but Stanford sneaked the idea beforehand from NIF's database and decided to incubate it.

The mastermind's idea involves a special band to be worn on the wrist of the cell phone user, which will automatically convert the energy released from the body in the form of heat or pulse rate into electrical signals, and then charge the cell phone through the wire.

The idea was selected out of the lot of 1,344 entries sent in by children from 82 districts comprising of class 8 to 10 category in the mid-April to mid-September period.

Anjali Aggarwal, principal of the school was elated upon the revelation and said, "She has raised the standard of our school and has made us proud".

Sarojini wants to be a science researcher when she grows up. Bubbling with happiness she said, "Science is a fascinating option for me and I want to explore it at a deeper level."

The girl, now the talk of the town revealed her exclaimed emotions and shared her ideology, "If we can have watches that can gauge the human pulse, then why not mobile phones?" The idea struck her and Neena Punj, Sarojini's teacher forwarded the idea to IGNITE.

NIF's Prof Gupta threw some light on Stanford's planning - "They are already researching on children toys, which can be recharged as and when the child plays with them with the help of his body heat". Sarojini's idea gave momentum to their thought and interest and they picked it up.

According to Gupta, more innovations are lying in the database of NIF which will be soon taken out of the Pandora's box.



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