5 Nigerian students showcase scientific innovations @ Intel ISEF-10

Five young Nigerian students are taking part in the on-going two-day 2010 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF), which ends today in the United States of America.

A press statement by the corporate affairs manager, Intel Nigeria, Ms Bunmi Ekundare, disclosed that the students were given the chance of a life time to represent Nigeria and compete with the rest of the world in a global engineering and science event.

She said that over the past decade Intel’s investment in this programme has helped to increase the number of participants by more than 36 per cent and the type of scientific projects students are tackling have grown increasingly sophisticated.

The 2010 Intel ISEF, ITRealms Online was informed, brought 1,500 exceptional high-school science students from over 500 Intel ISEF affiliated fairs held worldwide to California.

These students will compete for $3 million in awards and scholarships. Students would also have an opportunity to network with fellow students, the academia and employees of sponsoring companies.

The students include Abiodun Kehinde, Adebayo Olajumoke, Ebong Wisdom, Essien David and Idara Thomson.

Intel official noted that only gold medal winners from the Intel ISEF’s affiliated fairs were considered to take part in this competition. Each affiliated fair selects two individual projects and one team project to travel to the Intel ISEF to compete in 18 different categories.

For Abiodun Kehinde and Adebayo Olajumoke eeach won a gold medal at the Eskom Expo for Young Scientists (EEYS) which was held earlier this year and as a result they will be representing Nigeria at the Intel Fair.

Ebong Wisdom, Essien David and Idara Thomson of Akaossot Community Secondary School in Akwa Ibom, they worked together to win gold on a project for the EEYS in which they designed skin cream from local plants. “The thought of litmus, a plant extract, as an acid-base indicator, provoked this research. Several plant extracts, all weeds in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, were investigated for use as acid-base indicator.

Equally, Adebayo Olajumoke who hails from Lagos State expressed his desire to use knowledge of science and electronics to solve societal problems.

“My project is the Electronic Community Guard, which creates a secured environment as it alerts the home owner, the appropriate security agencies and every resident in the estate indicating the particular house under threat without alerting the intruder. It does not use radio waves which can easily be jammed but uses higher frequency imposed on the main voltage,” Olajumoke said.

In addition, Abiodun Kehinde, a gold winner from Ekiti State, took his research work on extracting chemicals from local plants, which is an anti skin-infection cream from local herbs.

“The aim of this work is to produce an anti skin-infection cream using local materials such as cam wood extract (Pterocarpus osun), palm-kernel oil and other ingredients like camphor, sulfur, candle, perfume which make this cream useful for the cure of many skin infections like eczema, heat rash, scabies, pimples, ring worm etc in human being due to their anti-microbial properties. It also cures skin infections in animals like goat and rabbit if applied to the skin of the animals twice” he said.


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