Nigerian Students Win $500000 at the Global Conrad Challenge Innovation Competition

Nigerian Students Win $500000 at the Global Conrad Challenge Innovation Competition

Four Nigerian students Favour, Elizabeth, Chibuzor, and Anthony from Government Science and Technical College, Garki, Abuja have won $500,000 in the global Conrad Challenge Innovation Competition. The Conrad Challenge is an annual STEM innovation challenge designed for high school students between the ages of 13 and 18. The competition brings together about 1500 participants worldwide.

The Conrad Challenge was founded in 2008 by Nancy Conrad, wife of the late NASA astronaut Charles ‘Pete’ Conrad, with the aim of continuing his legacy in innovation and entrepreneurship. The challenge consists of four categories which include Aerospace and Aviation, Health and Nutrition, Energy and Environment, and Cyber Technology and Security.

The Conrad Challenge runs in three stages: the entry round, the semifinals, and the finals. Teams compete through the different stages by making elevator pitch videos about their ideas, creating prototypes, and commercially viable strategies to help them take their ideas to market.

The four Nigerian students worked on an energy and environmental project named Composite Floor/Wall Tiles. The Composite Floor/Wall Tiles are an exceptionally durable water-resistant and affordable tiles that are made from waste polyethylene materials.

Since 2017, the Nigerian arm of the Conrad Challenge has held an annual event to challenge students in Nigeria to work collaboratively in teams and apply the STEM principles in coming up with marketable innovative ideas. Each year, the best team from the Nigerian challenge represents Nigeria at the Conrad Challenge global finals. They have successfully had 3 teams including the present winners get to the international stage of the competition.

In 2017/2018, Team Neon from Whitesands School, Lagos emerged the overall global winner in the Smoke-Free World category in the global challenge. Their brilliant idea was a virtual farm, an app to help tobacco farmers transition to other aspects of agriculture through simulations, tutorials, and access to opportunities. Team Neon was sponsored by GT Bank to attend the Global summit at Kennedy Space Center.In 2018/2019, Team Innovation from Pegasus High School, Eket, Akwa Ibom State designed an app named Piracy Tracker, their goal was to help minimize piracy and to help content producers and publishers to validate the originality of their content. They became one of the beneficiaries of the $2 million dollars total undergraduate scholarship awarded to Nigerian finalists in the competition in 2019 by Clarkson University, New York.

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The next Nigerian Conrad Challenge competition begins on the 14^th of September 2020. Entry is free to all teams.

Visit www.ngconradchallenge.org to learn more about the innovation challenge.