Skillfest 2022 winner: Arnav Sinha bags the first prize for Scientific Thinking

The Telegraph Online Edugraph took a small initiative to celebrate the young talent of our nation by organising the Skillfest 2022 to enable and empower high school students from across West Bengal. Our little initiative to celebrate 15 July, the United Nations designated World Youth Skill Day drew in an overwhelming response of young students showcasing their talents in 5 different categories for a chance to win exciting prizes.

Science isn't just that one branch where a group of people fiddle around with telescopes and test tubes. To be a scientist you need to be an out of the box thinker and our winner in the Scientific Thinking category, Arnav Sinha, a class 10 student from Motilal Nehru Public School excels at it like no other. In his category, students had been asked to identify the big questions in STEM and present a working model/experiment or thought presentation in a 2-3 min video.

Edugraph reached out to Arnav after the win and here’s what he has to say:

“I really enjoyed the Skillfest 2022, while doing my research work I got to know about many new things and problems and I implemented my knowledge to work out a solution that worked the best. It also helped me increase my knowledge of STEM. It was really educational and fun to work on the problems of the current time and to innovate a working solution for it. ​​It is hard to put this feeling into words. Nevertheless, I am very glad to win this competition and to represent my idea and solution on a bigger platform. I feel very proud and motivated knowing that my Idea got recognition on such a platform. I would keep honing my skills in problem-solving through innovations and I hope that one day I can implement my innovations in the real world to solve real-world problems on a large scale and help grow humanity to new heights together with everyone.”

When asked about his brainstorming process he added “I have made a Smart Liquid Soap Dispenser Machine, it is a sensor-based touch-free dispenser and one important key feature of this project is that it has a built-in smart timer that starts a countdown of 20-seconds every time one starts washing their hands. During these Covid times, Doctors and scientists have suggested we rub our hands with soap for 20 seconds for killing the viruses and bacteria effectively and as we all know Coronavirus spreads through touch, So I thought that these are the two problems that should be worth working on during these times and then I built this machine which solves both of the problems simultaneously, as it is touch-free and has a 20-second timer to guide the user.”

Arnav’s school principal Ms Ashu Tiwari had the following words of encouragement for him, “I am happy to note that the Telegraph Online Edugraph has taken a lead role in empowering youngsters. Skill development is the need of the hour and with our students participating in skillfest , students get an opportunity to showcase their innovative temperament and skill. I am to note that Arnav Sinha is an achiever at the Regional level. Arnav is extraordinarily bright, and persevering and we at school are overjoyed with this recognition that comes his way”.

Here’s a look at Arnav’s winning idea for a SmartLiquid Soap Dispenser (With timer) - which is handsfree and also counts down for you so you know how long you need to wash your hands for:

The Telegraph Online Edugraph congratulates Arnav on his win and wishes him continued success in his future endeavours.