Five city teens have been selected to represent India in the world’s biggest pre-college science fair to be held in the US between May 9 and 14.

Manosij Ghosh Dastidar, Anarta Ray, Abhiroop Lahiri and Aritra Chowdhury of South Point High School and Sourav Sarkar of Ramkrishna Mission Vidyalaya, Narendrapur, are headed for San Jose in California to attend the 2010 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

But more than the thrill of competing on a global platform, the opportunity to invent something seems to have revved up these kids. “The fair has given me the opportunity to innovate, something that I don’t often get to do in school,” said Anarta, who is awaiting his Class XI results.

Anarta and classmate Manosij have designed a low-cost single-shot hypodermic syringe that uses a plunger locking technology to stop working after the first use.

“We had watched a BBC documentary on immunisation drives where one syringe was used repeatedly despite sufficient needles being available. We wanted to make something to stop this practice,” said Manosij.

The five are among eight selected from India, who will compete with around 1,500 others from over 50 countries and more than 1,200 projects for $4 million in awards and scholarships.

Abhiroop, who appeared for HS this year, is building a mechanism to divide an angle into any number of equal parts while his classmate Aritra is working on “extracting carbonaceous nano material and exploring their potential as an enzyme mobilisation matrix”.

Durgapur resident Sourav, who also wrote the HS exam this year, is conducting a theoretical study on the “properties of two designs of reflection gratings regarding their screen intensity pattern”.

“These students are evidence that Indian can cultivate the next generation of innovators, scientists and entrepreneurs,” said Rahul Bedi, the director (corporate affairs) of Intel South Asia.