Student Vinícius de Moraes, aged 18, won the classification for the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the largest event in the field in the world, to be held in May 2022, in Atlanta, United States. He is a student at a private school in the city of Rio de Janeiro and presented a project that seeks to reduce the human impact on the planet.
The International Fair has not yet released the number of projects that will participate in next year’s edition. In 2021, the organization selected 1,500 initiatives from 89 different countries.
The student from Rio de Janeiro was selected among 4,300 other student projects in Latin America.
The student got the classification with the project ‘seeback-watch’, a technological method that seeks to replace battery watches with ecologically correct products.
Incorrectly discarded batteries are responsible for about 1% of the waste in the environment, according to data released by the study by Ciclo Vivo, a platform specializing in sustainability-related topics.
“I thought about developing this sustainable system for wristwatches through thermoelectric thin films, as 82% of people are unaware of the risks we pose to the environment. It is a nanotechnology integrated to an electronic micro-circuit that takes advantage of the temperature difference between the human wrist and the external environment, which generates electrical voltage to power the watch”, said Vinícius de Moraes, resident of the West Zone of Rio of January.
According to Vinicius, family members pressured him to enter a military position, a career that generates ‘stability’.
The student’s father, Fábio Botelho de Moraes, confirms that, at first, there was considerable resistance from the family. “Due to the country’s economic situation and the few academic opportunities, we believed that a military career would be the best option for Vinícius, but today, we fully support him.”
Reference: CNN Brasil
