Student Competitions

Samsung Names Solve for Tomorrow Contest Winners

• By Michael Hart
• 04/13/16

Samsung has chosen the five winners of its annual Solve for Tomorrow Contest to boost enthusiasm in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) topics among K-12 students.

Among the winning projects is one to make comfortable cardboard classroom furniture for special needs students and another to make prosthetic enhancements for veterans. Judges in the contest, founded in 2010, chose the five schools from an original group of 4,100 that submitted ideas last October.

Grand prize winners are:

• James Logan High School — Students designed and built a solar-powered charging station for their neighborhood. They were named the Community Choice Winner, selected by a public vote on Instagram and Twitter;
• Brooklyn Technical High School — Students developed a smartwatch app that warns pedestrians of oncoming vehicles. They were named Samsung Ambassador Choice Winner by a vote of Samsung employees;
• Horizon Middle School — Students designed a comfortable, cost-effective prosthetic enhancement for a local wounded veteran;
• Ridgewood Middle School — Students engineered comfortable classroom furniture for their classmates with special needs; and
• Loudoun Valley High School — Students designed a wireless, solar-powered and weatherproof safety alert system that connects users to emergency services.

Each of the grand prize-winning teams will take home $120,000 in technology for their schools and will be invited to Washington, D.C., for an awards luncheon. The students will meet with members of Congress and visit the White House.

The teams from California and Colorado will present their projects April 13 at the White House Science Fair.

"We are so proud of these students at these five schools for their ingenuity and creativity in applying STEM to solving problems in their communities and creating positive change," said Ann Woo, senior director of corporate citizenship at Samsung Electronics America.