Bhubaneswar, Sept. 24: The state is basking in the glory of its talented children. After Ananya Sritam Nanda, who won the Indian Idol Junior title, a 13-year-old has made a mark at the Google Science Fair in the US.
A Class IX student of Delhi Public School, Damanjodi in Koraput, Sripada Srisai Lalita Prasida won the award under the Google community impact category at the tech giant's science fair on Tuesday.
The Google Science Fair is an online competition, which has been sponsored by companies such as Google, Cern, Lego, National Geographic and the Scientific American. It was started in 2011 and is primarily meant for children between the age of 13 and 18 years.
Prasida's innovation that won her the accolades is a water purifier that she has named "low-cost bio absorbent". The innovation will help people in rural areas get clean water at low cost.
Prasida used corn and maize cobs as the purifying agent for which she won her an award of US $10,000. Along with the cash prize, she also bagged a scholarship of a year-long mentorship from the Scientific American to develop her project into reality.
The young girl used one of the most under-utilised agricultural wastes - corncobs - to develop a cheap but novel gadget to clean wastewater from domestic and industrial sources.
"The district I come from has many farming communities with scarcity of pure water. I met them and found the use of corncobs as purifying agents. I'm thrilled that my project won this award. It will help me develop the idea into a reality," said Prasida.
Like Prasida, earlier this week 16-year-old Jeswant Gembali from Jeypore, also in Koraput, made his mark in the field of science by emerging a winner in the national-level OLX Ideathon aimed at making India an environment-friendly place under the Swachh Bharat Mission. He won in the 'green award' category for using a concept of converting vegetable waste into manure. The jury comprised noted filmmaker Sudhir Mishra, environment expert Sunita Narain, OLX CEO Ervinpreet Singh Anand and tennis star Sania Mirza.
In the entertainment world, too, girls from the state have made their mark. Ananya Sritam Nanda, Class X student of DAV, Pokhariput, Bhubaneswar, won the Indian Idol Junior and was felicitated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Naveen Patnaik.
Another woman from Jajpur has won laurels at the international level. A short film edited by Anisha Acharya, 30, who hails from Jajpur, has won the prestigious Student Academy Awards, also known as the Student Oscar, for this year in the narrative category.
