Hackley Sixth Grader Awarded Third Place in Robotics and Engineering at Westchester Regional Middle School Science and Engineering Fair

 

WRMSSEF provided middle schoolers across Westchester with the opportunity to engage deeply with scientific research, experimental design and innovation. More than 65 students competed across various categories.

 

In January, Akash began exploring real-world problems in collaboration with his science teacher, Melissa Boviero. Inspired by their class unit on marine biology and human impacts on ocean ecosystems, Akash focused on the issue of plastic bottle pollution in bodies of water. He discovered that while some machines remove floating plastic, there were no efficient solutions for retrieving bottles submerged on the bottoms of bodies of water.

 

Akash rose to the challenge by engineering a submersible ROV (remotely operated vehicle) designed specifically to collect submerged plastic bottles. He named it the “Plastic EATR”,  Environmental Action Trash Remover, and designed a controlled experiment to evaluate its effectiveness.

 

Akash was awarded third place in the Robotics and Engineering category, earning praise from judges and visitors for both his design and thoughtful approach to solving an environmental challenge. Congratulations to Akash on this impressive achievement and on representing Hackley’s commitment to scientific inquiry and innovation at the middle school level!