Catalyst Project 2016

SINGAPORE AMERICAN SCHOOL

Catalyst

P r o j e c t s December 2016

What is the

Catalyst project?

There is plenty that sets an SAS high school education apart from that of other international schools, and certainly, from that of other US high schools. One of the most notable is the Catalyst project, an in-depth personalized learning experience.

The Catalyst project is a cultural as well as instructional self-study project where students work with a mentor on a self-directed learning experience. Each project is aimed at a specific and strategic, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, and time-bound goal. Students demonstrate their competency in the Catalyst project’s standards, centered around character, collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, and cultural competence, also known as the school’s DSLOs, in addition to self-awareness and application.

According to the latest research in education, learning is at its greatest, most relevant, and most meaningful when it is student-initiated and student-led. Ask adults today what they remember learning in high school, and their answer will often involve a learning opportunity where they were able to dive deep into an area of interest, often applying what they were learning in an authentic context. Colleges also recognize students who have the opportunity to dive deep, overcome challenges, and find meaning in their learning as stronger candidates for admission and success in college. This reality is the foundation and rationale for the Catalyst project course.

This innovative and engaging approach to education challenges high school juniors and seniors to embark upon a culminating final project in an area of their particular passion and interest. The Center of Innovation presents the perfect launchpad for this, with its able staff and its hubs of information, innovation, and impact operating to assist and support our students’ various projects.

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Similar to other academic offerings, the Catalyst project course includes a set of desired learning outcomes. The objective of the course is to harness students’ core knowledge, develop their character, and hone their skills in collaboration, communication, creativity and innovation, critical thinking, and cultural competence. All these values will help ensure success when they go on to pursue bachelor’s degrees at colleges and universities all over the world and in life beyond.

The Catalyst project gives students the opportunity to pursue their own paths of exploration in an academic setting, while demonstrating their readiness for university learning to the fullest extent of their enthusiasm, autonomy, capacity, and complexity. A student may conduct university laboratory research into autoimmunity treatment, or establish their own cosmetics company. They might want to conduct an extended service learning project, or perhaps spend a semester as an intern in a working art studio. There are no limits to what a student can do in Catalyst.

At present, seniors can opt to do a Catalyst project, reap the benefits, and distinguish themselves. However, for the class of 2018 onward, the Catalyst will be required, a rite of passage for every SAS senior. Ultimately, Catalyst represents a formidable feature of the SAS high school education, one that sets SAS high school graduates apart, differentiates them from their peers across the globe, and proves their unique abilities, capacity for excellence, and readiness for achievement at the university level.

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What is the

Center of Innovation?

Established in early 2014, the Center of Innovation is a pioneering project borne of educational research and development that serves not only SAS students, faculty, and staff, but also the SAS community and the public at large. Its mission? To support everyone in exploring their interests and pursuing their passions in new and flexible ways. At its core are a spirit of entrepreneurship where students are encouraged to take risks, challenge the status quo, and positively impact the world around them. It fosters a culture of possibilities through which people can pursue interests or learning, embracing new, flexible ways of thinking.

Should you wish to pursue specific learning, mount an inquiry, conduct research, and find the technology, resources, and networks for your project, whether professional or personal, you would come to the Center of Innovation.

The Center builds on traditional library resources, yet ventures beyond them. To be sure, it is a physical space, but also a conceptual, intellectual space spanning three hubs for information, innovation, and impact development. The information hub covers literacy, development, and technology integration; the innovation hub uses maker education, design thinking, and emerging technology to cultivate creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration, involves prototyping project testing and implementation of programs, while the impact hub provides mentoring and networking as well as sourcing external partners for projects. Ultimately, it’s a venue for the use of web-based multi-disciplinary resources, information gathering, and research, as well as a platform for technology integration, project evaluation, and development supported by mentorship and networking.

The Center aims to go beyond transforming the high school library into a home for sustainable programs.

The center fosters a culture of personalized learning that is focused on people, which is more powerful in

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transforming the rules of traditional education than simply changing a space.

To date, the Center of Innovation already supports a number of SAS’s research and educational initiatives. Foremost among them is the Advanced Placement Capstone program. SAS was one of just 130 schools in the world chosen by the College Board to pilot the Advanced Placement Capstone program that is now hosted by the Center of Innovation.

38 high school students took the year one AP Seminar course taught by a team of five teachers who are backed by an international panel of 18 educators. The intensive inquirybased course engages students in multi-disciplinary, cross-curricular dialogue regarding realworld topics and issues, honing their skills for examining these through various perspectives.

The course culminates in year two, in which the student embarks on an individual research project, tackling a question that is their passion and interest.

Center of Innovation coordinator Dennis Steigerwald, school librarian Bob Helmer, and an able staff including Ms. Noraini Anur, Ms. Simonette Torreon, and Mr. Brandon Walthall are ready to assist you as you pursue your particular endeavor.

Are you a homemaker contemplating an entrepreneurial venture? Are you a professional ready to test an invention that’s been percolating for decades? Or are you a student with an idea for a new product, service, or business, or one with a book manuscript that’s simmering?

All these can take root, blossom, and grow in the Center of Innovation at SAS.

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schedule

Catalyst Project Presentation

December 1, 2016 6

5:30-5:55 p.m. General Introductions and Kick-off Venue: Center of Innovation, 1st floor Venue

Magazine Area

Venue

iTheater

Venue

Makerspace

(C of I 2nd floor)

(C of I 2nd floor)

(C of I 1st floor)

Hana Matsudaria Strengths in Schools

Sachi Shah Generation Zeal: The Art of Passion

Zoe Adamopoulos The Empowering Ethics of Aitherios Apparel

William Mundy Putting Others to Sleep: A Behavioral Economics Talk

Ana Chavez Past, Present, Future: SAS Art Community

Sunita Srivatsan SAS Space Station Experiment

7:00 p.m.

7:25 p.m.

Aime Fukada From the Hapa Kouzina

Orion Portelli From Theory to Music

Zoe Ong Peranakan Culture and Blogging

7:30 p.m.

7:55 p.m.

Lucas Zhang New Wall Dynamics of Microbubbles in an Acoustic Trap

Carlos Chua Figment: A Study in Film Writing and Production

8:00 p.m.

8:25 p.m.

Aditi Mahesh KorathiByAditi: A Fashion Forward Line

Time 6:00 p.m.

6:25 p.m.

6:30 p.m.

6:55 p.m.

Janvi Kalra Smart AC: Stay Always Cool Rishabh Shyamsunder Solar Powered Battery Pack

8:30-8:45 p.m. Post-Presentation Celebration/Clean-up Venue: Center of Innovation, 1st floor

Venue

Venue

CATAlyst area

Learning Lab

Vicky Zeng The Korean-pop As a Culture: It’s all about perception.

Venue

Venue

(C of I 1st floor)

(C of I 1st floor)

Quiet Room

HS Office

Time of Death: Creating an App to Predict Mortality Rate in ICH Patients

Gabriella Koh

Wanling Goh Environmental Education for Elementary Students

Alex Risjad One Gem and One Thousand Voices

Cosette Koh How To Eat Science

Annie DeBattista Improvisational Theatre Competition

Rebecca Dai Behind the Scenes of Comic Book Creation

Matt Greisinger Improving Singapore Through Public Spaces

Avantika Raikar Nutrition and Taste

Allen Wang Beyond the Headlines

Alex Greisinger Building Management App

Aditya Bharadwaj The Importance of Investing

Emily Dolny Literature in Adaptation

James Quek Load Bearing Exoskeletons

Alex Won Perceive Human Rights Issues

Hawon Lee Helping Students Lead Themselves

(C of I 1st floor)

(2nd floor)

Elizabeth Saeger Medley: A Study in Identity

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Zoe Adamopoulos Fashion Forward: The Empowering Ethics of Aitherios Apparel I started to create an online fashion brand that runs as a social enterprise.

The purpose of this brand is to empower disadvantaged women in Southeast Asia. Specifically, the minimalist, in-style clothing of my brand will be sourced by local communities of women in Indonesia. Ultimately over the course of this semester, I learned to develop my skills and understanding of entrepreneurship, networking, and creating positive social impact.

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Aditya Bharadwaj Money Talks: The Importance of Investing In my school career, I have noticed my peers have no knowledge of one key skill in life: investing. My project seeks to solve this problem by making investing more appealing to youth through interactive Youtube videos and fun online simulations. Although my target audience is the youth population, I have based my videos on mutual funds, a specific type of investment, to appeal to all age levels. I believe that through informed investing, worrying about retirement will be a thing of the past.

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Ana Chavez The Past, Present and Future: The SAS Art Community At the beginning of my senior year, I sat in art class and listened to the letters from students who had just graduated from the SAS art community.

Along with my class, I laughed, teared up, and smiled at the words of wisdom they had left. I admired the legacy that these students made on the SAS community, and the fact that many more legacies would be made in the next four years after my class has graduated.

Thus, my Catalyst project this year is to uncover the past, present, and future of the SAS art community. Through interviews, documentary film, photographs, and memories from the community, my presentation will pinpoint what makes this group so tight knit, as well as one of the most well known and admired communities at SAS.

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Carlos Chua Figment: A Study in Film Writing and Production As an aspiring filmmaker and writer, I wanted to further understand the process of film production beyond the school-offered courses. I also wanted to connect the four branches of creative groups at school: film, writing, art and theater. My goal was to use all these resources to write my first screenplay and then produce and direct it into a feature-length film. Figment will be the culmination of all the work that I have done in Catalyst, and will demonstrate the knowledge of film production and screenwriting that I have learned from this course.

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Rebecca Dai Behind the Scenes of Comic Book Creation How hard can it be to create a comic book? Arranging panels, drawing backgrounds, creating different perspectives, correcting proportions, making sure characters look distinct yet maintain the same appearance throughout the entire story, and inking--it’s a terrifying process, especially when there’s a deadline coming up. Within the time span of two and a half months, I’ve finished drawing out the first draft of my comic book, and I hope to pursue comic creation as a side career in the future.

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Annie DeBattista Singapore International School Improvisational Theatre Competition Wherever I have lived, I have always been greatly invested in the Improvisational theatre culture. However, upon moving to Singapore I realized that this quite simply didn’t exist. I would find small patches of theatre teams across the country but all of these groups lacked the unity that I have seen in so many other places. So, I set out to create the Singapore International School Improvisational Theatre League: A network of Sinapore International school improv teams that will compete intermittently.

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Emily Dolny Literature in Adaptation: An SAS Course Historically I have not been an English oriented student so I decided to challenge myself and focus on making an english course at SAS that focuses on how literature and cinema can tell the same story differently. In the course students will learn how to make a claim and support it with evidence and research. In the process of creating this course I have learned a lot about curriculum and why we learn what we learn in classes. I have also learned about networking, communication, and accepting the conditions around why a course can and cannot be implemented at the school.

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Aime Fukada From the Hapa KouzĂ­na Growing up as an athlete and a major foodie, nutrition was bound to be a big part of my life. Put that together with my love for cooking and baking and you have a cookbook waiting to happen. Last semester, I drafted my cookbook, from the Hapa Kouzina, which delivers healthy recipes through telling my own story about growing up as a student athlete. This semester, I continued to work on my cookbook journey as I edited and revised my writing, worked on the graphic design and layout, and decided on a title. I now have a second draft of my book and am working to have it published after continuing work on it next semester!

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Wanling Goh Bringing Nature to the Classroom: Environmental Education for Elementary Students When I was an elementary student at SAS, there weren’t many opportunities for me to learn about the environment in class. It’s understandably difficult for teachers to integrate more eco-ed into an already packed curriculum.

However, in a world facing environmental and sustainability issues, it’s crucial for students to learn about the environment from a young age.

For my Catalyst project, I organized a three-day long nature day event for third and fourth grade students, including indoor activities and outdoor tours in the rainforest and nursery. In addition, I began working on a rainforest and nursery guidebook for younger students which will be completed next semester. With my project, I hope to bring environmental education to the classroom and get students excited about the nature around them.

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Matthew Greisinger Improving Singapore Through Its Public Spaces When I started my project, I knew that I wanted it to be centered around cities. With the time restraint paired with the complexity of the topic, I understood that I had to focus on a single aspect that makes a city unique.

Therefore, I decided to focus on public spaces and the impacts they have on their cities. Upon meeting my mentor, an urban planner who travels around Southeast Asia, he encouraged me that the best way to learn was to travel to different places and draw comparisons between them. Therefore, by traveling to and comparing Singapore’s Clarke Quay and Malaysia’s Malacca City, my goal was to find a single aspect I can adapt from Malacca City to improve the Clarke Quay. Once I got started, I knew that it would be extremely difficult, for I am trying to compare apples and oranges in a sense.

However, I know that doing this experience has taught me more about public spaces than any book or website could.

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Alex Greisinger SAS Student Application & Building Management Interface I have heard many complaints from students at SAS about problems that are present within the campus’ physical environment. Classrooms too cold.

Bathrooms are flooded. These problems are ones that are talked about among the student body on a consistent basis but yet never seem to go away. There was not a way to get the voices of the students heard by the people who could solve the problems. Therefore, I felt that a beneficial project for SAS to implement would be an application where SAS students could provide feedback on the issues they encounter within the physical SAS campus and an interface that SAS building managers could use to more effectively identify, organize, and solve the problems based on the student feedback.

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Janvi Kalra Smart AC - Stay Always Cool Ever woke up in the middle of the night to adjust the AC? Ever had to interrupt your workout to do the same? Ever felt cold and warm in different places of the same room?

Over the course of two catalyst semesters I have been working on a controller that aims to automatically adjust the AC temperature set point to one’s body comfort. This year I came into the Catalyst class with a functional prototype of the controller and worked to improve the prototype. I did this by running tests, analyzing test results and doing quantitative research from credible sources. In parallel to modifying my prototype, I worked on creating a website for my project. This website aims to create a clear, concise way of documenting the different aspects of my project.

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Cosette Koh How to Eat Science: A Course Delving Into The Science Behind Food I’m on a journey to make a difference and to break the stereotypes of who or what a scientist is. I’m starting locally, attempting to institute a lasting change in the SAS community by building the school’s first food science course, that counts as a science credit and encompasses three main units of nutraceutical science, food chemistry/taste perception, and food modification/sustainable agricultural techniques. I’m attempting to spark new states of wonder by meshing together students’ universal love for food with their not-always-soprevalent love for science. I’m becoming the mad hatter of my own narrative, and this course is my wonderland. I hope to enthrall students’ senses with the spherification of fruit and emulsification of creams, and open their eyes to the chemical reactions behind these explosive, artistic creations. By unveiling the chemistry behind a very ordinary aspect of our lives, I re-ignite the magic behind science.

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Gabby Koh Time of Death: Creating an App to Predict Mortality Rate in ICH Patients

The brain remains an unknown domain. It’s unpredictability and mystery has been what’s fueled my interest for it. Catalyst has allowed me to delve deeper into my fascination and perhaps even make a change. For my Catalyst project, I will create a Swift-based application that will be used to predict the 14-day mortality rate of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) patients.

I dedicated this semester of Catalyst to analyzing patient CT scans (that would be used to create the mortality prediction module), learning how to code in Swift, and creating a design layout of how my app would look like.

The volumetric analysis that I have done has allowed NNI to create a more accurate prediction equation. By creating this equation and putting it in an easy-to-use, aesthetic application, it allows the information to be easily accessed, convenient, and efficient. The application created will ultimately be for patients to predict their 14-day outcome, however it also can serve as a way to collect new data to make the equation better with each patient it serves.

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Haewon Lee Student Government: Helping Students Lead Themselves Students have few opportunities to govern themselves. In class, the boss is the teacher. At home, we have our parents to worry about. One of the only institutions where students are meant to govern themselves from beginning to end is the student council, but even that isn’t perfect. Lots of problems with student government in high schools can be summarized with one sentence, “We just don’t know enough.” Student councils often occupy a space that’s either behind-the-scenes, separate from most other student activities, and is just not something that many students not directly involved are invested in.

My Catalyst project was a semester-long inquiry into how our model at SAS could be made to avoid these problems. I researched models of student government at other schools, compiled student, teacher, and admin opinions on the topic, and used all this information to create a new vision of our SAS student council.

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Aditi Mahesh Creating A Fashion Forward Line: KorathiByAditi

KorathiByAditi is an online store I created that incorporates beads made

by Korathi women, a disenfranchised community in Tamil Nadu that is very involved in the arts. I take the necklaces and beads that they make and redesign them into something modern yet traditional that women of this day and age would actually want to wear. The platform I am using is Etsy, a place where artistic entrepreneurs can find their audiences and flourish. All the profits go back to the Korathi community.

Modern yet ethnic.

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Hana Matsudaira Strengthsfinder: The Power of Strengths Conversations For my catalyst project, I trained to become a Strengths Communicator, someone who is trained in the 34 Strengthsfinder strengths. The purpose of my project was to help my peers gain a better understanding of their top five strengths and see how they play out in their day to day lives. My project included 10 one hour strengths conversations with 10 peers and advocating for the Strengths program in the high school. Ultimately, through my project I was able to gain a better understanding for those around me through strengths.

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Will Mundy Putting Others to Sleep: A Behavioral Economics Talk What if there was a way to develop healthier sleep behaviors by leveraging the irrational quirks that reside within each of us? That is where my Catalyst project comes in. This semester, I investigated whether the behavioral economics principles of commitment, consistency, and social proof could be used to influence healthier sleep behavior. I gathered a large participant pool of nearly 30 students at SAS, and divided them into three groups: the control group, and two treatment groups. After a weeklong study involving participants posting a commitment to sleep at a certain time to achieve a healthy amount of sleep, I have analyzed the results to determine whether behavioral economics can be used to develop healthier sleep behavior in students.

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Zoe Ong Peranakan Culture and Blogging: Forging New Traditions Peranakan culture is dying. Or is it? In fact, you may be asking, what is it?

Peranakan culture is essentially a hybrid of Malay and Chinese, Indian, and European traditions and influences merging to create a multi-ethnic, multi-faceted society. Today, it faces the challenge, as many cultures do, of remaining relevant in an age of rapid modernization. Part of that issue is the lack of knowledge about this culture among younger generations.

Last semester, I worked on creating a website to promote Peranakan culture to today’s youth as my Catalyst project. However, as I continued my work on this project during this semester, I realized that this “dying out” of Peranakan culture, ironically, would have been a non-issue to historical Peranakans: the culture itself is a result of change and immigration, and was in a constant state of flux. I interviewed members of the Peranakan community, re-designed my website with the more specific goal of reaching the international school student body, and have discovered more than ever before about not only Peranakan culture but the nature of my own family’s heritage.

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Jefferson Portelli The Process of Creation: Music Theory’s use in the songwriting process From the start of my music learning process, I’ve always wanted to further explore the logistics behind music, why do certain things sound better than others, how can I recreate this in my own work? In order to tackle this question, along with others like it, I decided to begin learning music theory, the study of the theoretical elements of music including sound and pitch, rhythm, melody, harmony, and notation. To deepen my understanding of this topic, I endeavoured to apply specific techniques in the creation of my own original song. Through online courses and discussion with actual music theory teachers and artists, I have applied multiple different techniques ranging in complexities in my own music, including compound metre, simple metre, jazz chords, and other more discrete techniques such as appoggiatura. My hope is that I can use these skills I’ve developed in later projects during my life, and continue to write songs in the future.

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Lexa Risjad One Gem and One Thousand Voices: Creating a Jewelry Line to Empower Indonesian Victims of Sexual Assault As an artist, I wanted my passion to be presented. But what if this passion could help those around me? Those close to heart? This was the birth of Caya Jewelry. I created Caya Jewelry, a jewelry social enterprise, to provide rehabilitation funds for the Pundi Perempuan Organization. The Pundi Perempuan Organization helps Indonesian victims of sexual assault and trafficking attain a legal voice and proper rehabilitation through cooperations with the Indonesian Women’s Crisis Center (WCC). So what part do I have in this funding? By designing my own jewelry and selling it online through Carousell, Instagram, and at shopping expos (ViVo City and Orchard Gateway), I will represent the voices of the sexual assault victims while giving the jewelry profit I made to fund this rehabilitation program. Along with that, I will provide information as well as the opportunity for people here, locally, to embrace their fashion statement and empower. My slogan, “one gem and one thousand voices”, represents the jewelry my customers buy and how wearing it will help advocate Caya Jewelry’s cause and support the Indonesian victims.

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Elizabeth Saeger Medley: A Study in Identity As a lesbian, growing up in a more accepting society with open-minded parents has given me a distinct advantage over most LGBT kids. Despite that, it’s still taken me years to discover my identity and unlearn homophobic ideas. We may have come quite a ways in the past few decades, but we still have a long way to go. But what if other LGBT youth could explore their identities and find themselves without the fear of society’s expectations?

What if we could be completely, totally free to be ourselves?

Medley is an independent video game, in the style of visual novels like 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. With mainstream media’s enormous effect on youth, I’ve designed Medley to be an exploration of identity. Using music - an area I’ve dived into over the past few months - the story tells a gay girl’s coming-of-age, intersecting with those of many friends and acquaintances, to craft a living, breathing representation of all the different kinds of LGBT youth out there with different backgrounds and experiences. By getting its development started over the course of this semester, I hope to eventually release a full, functioning game for free to give every LGBT kid some representation.

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Avantika Raikar Nutrition and Taste: Crafting a Vegan Cookbook I have always had a huge passion for cooking and nutrition. Therefore, having the chance to create a project about anything, I decided to work towards creating a final product that could reflect those two passions of mine: a vegan cookbook. Although this semester, my focus has been to create the recipes, my ultimate goal is to publish a cookbook and donate the proceeds to charities for hunger. I hope to eventually take this aspect of my project further by hosting cooking classes with the recipes from my book, and put those proceeds towards charity as well.

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Sachi Shah Generation Zeal : The Art of Being Passionate As someone willingly ready to dedicate their life to the pursuit of art, I wanted to understand how I reached this point. By looking externally, I studied passion and self-determination in the student community. As a result, my project aims to express the relentless zeal of these individuals through a short film showcasing their talents. The pianist, swimmer, horserider, and artist all experience the familiar consumption of passion in their own ways. As something invisible to the general public, I used bodypainting as a visual manifestation of what passion looks like, and ultimately, why it is the most powerful feeling.

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Sunita Srivatsan SAS Goes to Space!

As space technology has become increasingly accessible around the world, SAS has gained the opportunity to send an experiment onto the International Space Station. In my presentation, I will discuss my journey since initiating the SpaceLab@SAS. I’ll delve into the progress our team has made and next steps in areas ranging from biological experimentation and hardware/software development to PR operations and finance.

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Allen Wang Beyond the Headlines: The American Election in Context As everybody focuses on the craziness of the election, I find myself wondering how America got to so polarized and how the nation got to the point where it is now. My catalyst project focuses on researching and reading about the political contexts that surround many facets of the election, from analyzing why some political figures have had enough momentum for the country to love and/or hate them, to attributing certain events to bigger trends. By writing a series of articles that compile and synthesize my findings while explaining them in a digestible tone, I learn not only how to explore my passion for reading political news, but also how to funnel my thoughts in a way that others can comprehend.

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Alex Won Human Rights Issues: An Analysis of Perceptions How are we going to get people to be more involved in human rights issues?

Much human rights work starts with raising awareness. But what is the most effective way to make more people aware of these issues? For my catalyst project, I recorded the reactions of some students on some contemporary human rights crises, such as North Korea and Syria. I showed them different clips, photos, and also stated facts through face to face speech on what was going on. Then students had time to reflect and self evaluate. What resonated most with them? Videos, photos, or a speech? The way we can attack bigger issues starts with small steps, such as knowing the most efficient methods to do so.

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Vicky Zeng Korean-pop as a Culture: the Structure of Image and Fandom As the Hallyu wave expands exponentially across international stages, a growing divide between the international and domestic Korean-pop fandoms on the expectations of idol behavior has, when scandals arises, been straining the relationship. A general consensus among the international fandom holds Korean fandom to be overly restrictive and expectant, but national cultural differences aside, K-pop itself has a culture of image-making and unique fandom importance that delegates fans an extent of image ownership. The idols hold obligations: image over the individual.

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Luke Zhang Near Wall Dynamics of Microbubbles in an Acoustic Trap One recent miracle of science was the development of nanomaterials which have uses in fields ranging from biomedicine to microchip processing.

One recent proposal for the use of such nanoparticles would be for cancer treatment, formulating radiation absorbers to lessen the effects of chemotherapy for skin cancer patients. These PDMS/gold hybrids would be injected into the bloodstream, raising some safety concerns. My project would essentially try to create a simulation of one of these nanoparticles in the human bloodstream through the use of COMSOL multiphysics modeling software and Matlab.

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Rishabh Shyamsunder Solar Powered Battery Pack Two Billion people out of the global population lack the access to electricity/ light/power after 7 in the morning. THE world hardly notices this as all go about their daily lives. It is a well established fact that access to energy is a key driver to eradicate poverty in the world. There are limitations to provide all this power to the “powerless” from fossil fuel sources = the planet will simply fry. Sustainable solutions based on renewable energy is the only way out. At the same time, the Internet of things is proliferating devices by the millions and billions in a very short time – all of them need power to function.

The universalisation of mobile power is now a reality people want constant access to power and on the move it’s inevitable that the above will result in a convergence solar power small enough to fit in a pocket and be available literally on demand anytime anywhere.

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James Quek Load Bearing Exoskeletons and Their Real World Applications As future tech such as artificial intelligence begins to phase out manual labor of the lowest degree, our focus shifts to developing intelligent systems rather than utilising the most powerful processor in history, the human mind.

Powered exoskeleton technology seeks to create a fluid biomechatronic interface in which to control a machine that conforms to the actions of the user, allowing the pilot a control system that is far more intimate and responsive than a typical control panel. Exoskeleton technology is a budding new field of engineering which I believe has the potential to change the nature of manual labour, especially manual labor that requires the adaptive thinking and human judgement that no computer can account for. Many fields today require such technology and between relief efforts, assembly lines, factories, and even military applications the need for cheap, reliable exoskeleton technology is higher than ever.

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ThankYou

The Catalyst program is supported in part by the SAS Foundations. We thank you, the donor community, for your generosity which makes these projects possible.

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