Surrey SAIL students in the running for $5,000 STEM prize

October 27, 2023

Five students from the Surrey Academy of Innovative Learning (SAIL) were recently named semi-finalists at this year’s Youth Innovation Showcase, comprising half of the top 10 in the running for a $5,000 grand prize.

Now in its fifth year, the Youth Innovation Showcase is an annual STEM competition for youth in BC and the Yukon, with students split into two categories of ages 12-15 and 16-19. The goal of the competition is to foster and encourage youth innovations designed to solve a challenge in their lives or community.

The five Grade 10 SAIL semi-finalists selected in the 12-15 year-old category are:

Projects are not limited to a specific field of science, and this year’s entries range from environmental paper products, to a smart device designed to reverse drug overdoses to a three-in-one bag/jacket/sleeping bag combo designed to reduce waste.

Liam Burdett, academies department head for SAIL, credited the large Surrey representation in this year’s competition to the school’s two science teachers Chetna Sharma and Sukmani Sidhu, who worked with the students. With the school’s students so invested in innovation through science, technology and design, Burdett said many of them jumped at the chance to showcase some of the creative ideas they had come up with for other projects.

For student Margo Senchenko, the competition was a great opportunity to refine and expand upon an idea she had last year for a sustainable paper formed from old food scraps.

Inspired by the TV show The Office, which was set at a paper company, Senchenko wanted to create a more environmentally friendly paper. Rather than relying on trees as the source, she looked at an approach that would reduce the need for trees while also tackling other global issues.

“So what I came up with was a method that uses an alkali treatment to boil food waste in a solution that then lets me form the fibers into a paper,” she said, noting that it not only reduces the reliance on trees for paper, but also helps reduce food waste, offsets methane from decomposition and reduces possible contaminants in landfills.

Margo said if she were to win the $5,000 top prize, she would either save it for her future studies, or re-invest it into her process, with an eye to patent her paper and streamline its production.

“Right now I use a lot of water and so finding a different way to get the same product, without using too much water would be the next step,” she explained.

For student Nicholas Creanga, he decided to focus on turning blackberries into a usable paper as a means to tackling an invasive plant issue local to British Columbia.

"When I started this project, I found it hard thinking about stuff to do with Himalayan blackberry bushes, as they were so spiny and hard to eradicate once they had established themselves," he said. "Solutions like burning them, which produced dangerous hydrocarbons, are a risk to your health and were out of the question, and pouring herbicides would leave the soil contaminated and uninhabitable for up to five years, which would impact the land excessively."

After much trial and error, Creanga was able to find a way to turn the bush fibres into something malleable enough that could easily be used for everyday life: paper.

Hoping to one day replace the need for wood-based paper, Creanga hopes his project will reshape how we deal with the invasive plant species while also serving to protect our trees and forests.

While SAIL has had students in the semi-finals and even the finals in previous years, none have previously been named winners. With 50/50 odds for the 12-15 category this year, Burdett is hopeful someone from SAIL will take the top spot.

Judging for the semi-finals takes place this week, after which the 10 semi-finalists will be narrowed down to five finalists. A further round of judging will then take place in November, and the winners will be announced at a live awards show on Nov. 29.