New Era’s Amaan Ram Acknowledged at a National Science Event for his visually impaired Innovation

Amaan Ram, a student of the senior secondary school echoed this school’s sentiment by emerging victorious in yet another coveted National level competition

Vadodara (Gujarat) [India], June 2: Student innovation has been one of the main driving forces behind the New Era’s academic experience, allowing the bright young minds of the school to express their tech-savviness.  Amaan Ram, a student of the New Era Senior Secondary School echoed this school’s sentiment by emerging victorious in yet another coveted National level competition known as the Young Scientist India Competition 2021 organised by ‘Spacekidz’ India. The school has been making countless efforts to shape and develop the students towards a path of providing effective solutions through the use of technology and Amaan is a result of such efforts.

Young Scientist India Competition is one of the prestigious platforms for student innovation which seeks to provide a highly innovative platform for the students. The "Young Scientist Program" was designed to promote science awareness to high school students and to increase their understanding of science, and attract them into scientific careers. Space Kidz India is an organization that has always been endeavouring to generate awareness among children for a "borderless world", creating International experiential learning for students in the field of science, technology, arts, and culture. Amaan Ram was amongst New Era’s top students to take part in this competition.

Surpassing the gruelling three rounds held in December 2020 and April 2021, Amaan managed to bring back the victory to New Era. He was declared the first prize winner with a prize worth Rs 50,000 and this win added another feather in Amaan’s cap. For taking part in this competition, he developed his innovation ‘VAVI’ a Virtual Assistant for Visually Impaired which was centred on providing support to the differently-abled through digital solutions. “Winning and achieving by any New Eraite is a clear reflection of the will to learn, work harder and give more. It is a feeling of great content that we at New Era have, of being able to nurture young minds like Amaan’s to give back to society in their innovative ways,” said Mrs Priyadarshini Kelkar, the School Director for New Era Senior Secondary School.

This innovative tech tool “VAVI” is a fully AI-fledged app that works on the principles of machine learning, and AI, to help visually impaired persons. It is an ongoing project, is constantly being upgraded and improved upon. While in VAVI 1.0, there were features like face recognition and OCR only. In the current version, many other attributes like object detection, dangerous object alarm, currency detection, and fire and staircase detection will be included. It is an economical tool which, despite its extraordinary features may cost only about Rs. 6000/- and the involvement of government organisations and NGOs may even be able to subsidise it for the needy. In addition to the cash prize, Amaan was also offered the opportunity to visit BITS, Pilani after the pandemic, and ‘Spacekids’ - India will also be helping the budding innovator to fund his project.

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