Daijiworld Media Network - Puttur (SP)

Puttur, Jul 31: Two pre-university college students from Indraprastha College Uppinangady have been chosen for the National Geographic Explorer Award at the Google Science Fair organized at the Google central office at California, USA.

The proud students who have won the compettion and bagged this award as a team are A U Nachiket Kumar, and Aman K A. The award for Inspiring Educator has been awarded to science teacher of the college and guide of the team, Nishita K.

Google Science Fair invites scientific researchers at the global level for competition. In the first phase, 1,000 researches are chosen. Then 100 teams are chosen as regional finalists. Among them, 20 teams are chosen as global finalists, and they are invited for the awards ceremony at California.

The team from Uppinangady has been chosen for this illustrious award for their path breaking research in environment-friendly rubber in which naturally available ingredients are used to give firmness and colour to the rubber sheets, which avoids use of chemicals like formic acid and para nitrophenyl.

As both Nachiket and Aman are minors, Google had facilitated their parents to participate in the capacity of their guardians. As visa could not be arranged on time, the parents could not travel. As this would have impeded the students’ participation, retired police personnel, Dinesh Kumar M, and friend of Aman's father, Samuel Jose, accompanied the team as guardians.

In the said fair, the team of Irish teenager, Fionn Ferreira (18) bagged the Google Grand Prize of US$ 50,000. The award being given for environmental research of US$ 15,000 was awarded to the Indraprastha college team. Nishita K has won US$ 5,000 having been adjudged inspiring teacher.