Alex Rose-Innes
Ground-breaking scientists are changing the world, one innovation at a time and according to the Smithsonian Institute, the world should take note of these women and their projects in 2022.
Breastmilk reinvented
Three years ago, scientist Leila Strickland struggled to breastfeed her son. When, a few years later after the birth of her daughter she experienced the same problem, she partnered with food scientist Michelle Egger to develop the world’s first cell-cultured breastmilk.
BIOMILQ, founded in 2020, grows mammary cells in flasks and then places them in bioreactors which mimic breasts’ physiology. Instead of reverting to milk formulas, BIOMILQ closely replicates real mother’s milk, more complete than any existing baby formula.
Traditional milk formula on the market cannot add natural antibodies and microbiomes found in breast milk to their products. This unique innovation of Strickland and Egger ensures that mothers desperate to provide optimum nutrition to their infants are provided with such an option.
Globally, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention agree that mother’s milk is best for the first six months of a baby’s life. Different cultural outlooks regarding breastfeeding in public and the inability of moms to breastfeed their neonates make parental choices difficult. BIOMILQ resembles mother’s milk in all aspects. With their innovation, these two scientists ensure babies’ nutrition and mothers’ wellbeing.
Realising the immense benefits of the product, funding was acquired in order to scale up capabilities and manufacturing capacity this year as these female scientists work towards a market-ready product.
Prisa Shroff (15) designs AI invention predicting wild fires
Shroff, the youngest innovator on the list of global scientists to watch, designed an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based system predicting with almost 99% accuracy where a wildfire is likely to occur.
Living in California where wildfires destroy millions of hectares each year, this teenager realised that with climate change, vast areas around the world was being destroyed by fire.
She started researching solutions after realising that existing measures mostly focused on detection and suppression instead of prevention. After winning the Lemelson Award for Invention in the Broadcom MASTERS, a science and engineering competition for middle school students, she was quoted as saying that a solution was needed for this global destructive phenomenon.
With California experiencing its worst fire season on record, Prisha was driving with her family near Los Angeles, watching the destruction through the car window. “After I witnessed this fire, I arrived home and heard about Australian and Amazon wildfires on the news and how the same effects of the Los Angeles fire were happening at a bigger scale. This really proved to me that this is a global problem and there is a need for a solution that can prevent these devastating wildfires.”
Her AI-based system predicts areas vulnerable to wildfires based on real-time data such as temperature, soil moisture, precipitation and wind. If an area is high risk the system alerts fire agencies and can even deploy a drone with flame retardant.
This year, Prisha will work on improving her AI model by adding millions of wildfire data points. She is also working with researchers at Arizona State University to develop a drone deployment system which can carry and spray flame retardant. The drone she had been using was merely a prototype and needed to be refined.
Energy-Saving Windows
According to ESI Africa, the online power journal for Africa, the built environment is responsible for 56% of all energy use. In America, it is 40% with air conditioning systems accounting for 12% of that.
Doris Sung, an architect at the University of Southern California in the USA and co-founder of TBM Designs realised that if the impact of sunlight on windows could be minimised, vast amounts of energy can be saved as light and heat are allowed into buildings through it.
A current solution, such as available low energy glass unfortunately disrupts sleeping patterns and negatively affects productivity. Sung invented and patented InVert, a self-shading window composed of strands of fluttery pieces of a bendable metal. Not only did this innovation wIn her the Cooper Hewitt 2021 National Design Award, but it is saving the Planet, too.
How it works
“When the sun is directly hitting the pieces inside the window, they flip to block the sun from heating the interior. This effect shades the building from the sun, prevents solar heat gain and reduces the need for air conditioning,” according to Sung.
The windows reduce air-conditioning usage by as much as 25% and only require solar rays to operate. For every 12-storey building using InVert™, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by approximately 360 metric tons of CO2.
Next month, an exhibit featuring InVert™ technology—called sm[ART]box—will open at California State University, with another installation for a housing project in southern Los Angeles later during 2022. There are already various other projects awaiting installation across the nation such as at the John F. Kennedy International Airport.
