Age: 14
After crushing the Calgary Youth Science Fair in Grades 5 and 6, Aryan Sharma levelled up in Grade 7 by creating his own eco-friendly bioplastic using cassava starch. His best prototype can withstand more pressure than the average plastic bag, and his most successful prototype degraded in three months and 14 days. The project landed him a silver medal at the 2023 Canada-Wide Science Fair. Not content to rest on his laurels, he took his prize money and reinvested it (along with $500 from the City of Calgary’s Jack Leslie Youth Environment Grant) into his next submission: the MicroGuard Microplastic Collector, which he describes as a cost-effective, do-it-yourself, autonomous underwater robot that detects and filters microplastics in real time. It was worth the effort, nabbing him gold at the 2024 Canada-Wide Science Fair.
“I feel like every kid deserves to be exposed [to technology] because, once people see a whole new world of possibilities, then they start to tinker.”
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Anastasia and Mercedes Korngut
