Young inventors win at biannual HCC Inventathon

Jun 5, 2018

Houston-area middle and high school students showed off their entrepreneurial talents at the 2018 Inventathon sponsored by the Center for Entrepreneurship at the Houston Community College Southwest campus.

The competition's 120 participants were tasked with crafting innovative solutions for saving and conserving energy. Twenty of the inventions were submitted for judging.

First place went to Saran Chockan and Vibhor Kumar from Clements High School for their “SkyPrint” tool, which saves paper by eliminating unnecessary ads and white space when printing online articles and content.

Second-place winners are Raymond Nguyen, Varun Dixit, and Bill Rolph from Memorial High School who created and built a system that replaces regular bicycle brakes with a regenerative braking system that will allow a bike to store power and charge electronics.

The third-place winners include Jefferson Yu and Desai Sannidhya of Elkins High School; Amogha Pokkulandra and Arjun Bhatia from Quail Valley High School; and Keshav Shah from Dulles High School. The team project was called “Energized Exhaust” and utilized a groundbreaking chemical reaction between CO2 and Lithium Nitride to fully neutralize gasoline emissions into clean air.

Fourth place went to Manan Bhatia, Ibrahim Elsharkawy and Elyas Stephen of James E. Taylor High School for their invention of a battery that recharges itself when shaken.

“I'm really inspired by the creative problem solving we saw from these young entrepreneurs," said Ravi Brahmbhatt, director of student innovation and entrepreneurship at HCC. "We are really proud of everyone who took part."