Hannah Herbst from Florida, the U.S., is a teen inventor and social innovator. Currently studying Computer Science at Florida Atlantic University, Hannah believes computers provide a great platform to make people’s lives better.
Hannah has been involved in extra-curricular activities since she was very young – she has dabbled in singing and athletics. In her seventh grade, she was introduced to engineering as a platform for problem-solving when she attended a summer engineering camp. She was the only girl at the camp, which involved building robots. She learnt from her peers and online articles about how to program and build robots. Hannah found the camp interesting and started to develop an interest in engineering.
Later the same year, when she received a letter from her pen pal in Ethiopia, she realised how engineering could be used to solve problems such as energy poverty. This led to the birth of what was later called BEACON.
What about the letter inspired her?
When Hannah was in the fourth grade, her teacher introduced her class to a programme called Compassion International, where kids can connect with other kids in the world through a pen pal letter-writing system. During this programme, Hannah befriended Ruth from Ethiopia who was a few years younger than her. Ruth and Hannah would exchange letters every now and then.
Time passed by and when Hannah was in her seventh grade, Ruth wrote to her about the problems she was facing due to energy poverty. These included lack of electricity and access to clean water.
Hannah was moved by the problems faced by Ruth and people living in similar situations, and decided to use her newly found interest in engineering to create a device that would solve Ruth’s problems.
A BEACON of hope
Living in Florida and being surrounded by big bodies of water, Hannah decided to focus on using water her source for power. She started building a device called BEACON (Bringing Electricity Access to Countries through Ocean Energy), which would tap energy from moving water and convert it into usable electricity. This could be used to charge batteries as well as a way to purify water using a process called two-phase microfiltration.
Initially, Hannah built a big, complicated, wave energy-collecting device, but the device would keep breaking. Her Science teacher urged her to take a different path, but she found it difficult to move away from the first prototype she built. She thought it would work.
However, she moved on, and working with her mentor, she finally built the prototype. BEACON fetched her the title of America’s Top Young Scientists in 2015, as she won the Discovery Education and 3M Young Scientist Challenge. BEACON was exhibited at the White House Science Fair, and Hannah has spoken about her invention at the United Nations Science, Technology and Innovation Summit.
She wishes to make BEACON a commercial device soon.
What makes her special?
Hannah empathised with Ruth’s problems and decided to use her interest in engineering to help her. Despite her prototype breaking several times, Hannah never gave up until BEACON became a reality.
Picture Credit : Google