Oghoghorie Otejiri Jude
Born in 1987, he is primarily into the repair and maintenance of Electrical /Electronics Equipment and GSM phones, but in the past year has been invoved in the design and construction of a personal pest protector which emits high frequency waves that repels pests, the Austeer Nicad Trasnsformer Less Cell Charger, which can charge upto two AA or C sized cells to one time at the standard rate of 40mA and the Automatic Emergency Touch, which turns itself on automatically when the mains power fails, thus coming in handy during emergencies.
However, the eletronics/electronics diploma holder from The Polytechnic, Ife is nominated for the design and construction of a 0.1secs Automatic Changeover/switch off device, which he designed due to switch off device due to its economic viability in the Nigerian environment where national power supply (PHCN) is very unstable.
The significance of this invention is to ease, simplify and quickening the process of changing over the source of power supply from medium generators to national power supply (PHCN) within 0.1secs, while the user continues with whatever he/she is doing, at the same time switching off the generator automatically, thereby conserving fuel. According to him, “another reason why I invented this device was because I observed that many Nigerian portable generators make lots of noise, there-by causing noise pollution, and Many Nigerians (who purchase it for home/business use) tend to have their doors and windows closed or keep the generator distance at a distance in order to prevent the noise of the generator, as a result, they don’t know when national power (PHCN) is restored even for as many hours as possible. Most often, such generators are kept at backyards. Hence, the generator continues to run even when national power supply has been restored. At other times, generator owners are faced with the inconveniency of leaving what they are doing to switch off the generator and changeover to national power manually when they are aware of the restoration of national power.”
Okelola Olumayokun Francis
Born in 1984, work of this double honours graduate from the Federal University of Technology, Minna, Nigeria focuses on research on the determination of environmental pollution cum climate change effect in major cities and towns. It includes the determination of carbon footprint. Carbon footprint is a measure in parts per million (PPM) of the impact our activities have on our health, the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation e.t.c. The carbon footprint is a measurement of all greenhouse gases being produced and has a carbon dioxide equivalent. His works investigates the presence of fossil fuel combustions sources cum their emissions concentration of carbon dioxide and other green house gasses (GHG) that affects human health and the environmental effects particularly on Climate Change in towns in Nigeria.
He has a passion to transfer classroom knowledge on environmental physics studies into a pragmatic beneficial project for the University immediate environment and host community, and though he faced difficulties in getting past works for reference and study on environmental cum climate change hazards in Nigeria and the fact that not much has been done on carbon footprint cum combustion emissions concentration and connection with climate change as well as the lack of readily available emissions gasses detectors, in the past year, he has developed a reference document (a sort of “Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions concentration atlas” or “carbon footprint map”) for the different pre-lints or wards of the different towns surveyed from the major sources. This final document also highlighted the various environmental pollution gasses and their indices for the areas surveyed August 2009.
He also contributed to the Conference Of Parties (COP15) framework convention on climate change and the United Nations framework convention on Climate change. (UNFCCC) in November, 2009, shared up-to-date research initiative findings on the climate change effect in Nigeria to an international audience on the occasion of the world Climate change day on October 24, 2009, shared and presented concluded phases of the findings of my scientific works to various stake holders in Nigeria including participants at the West Africa 6th Earthwatch Conference in November 2008, presided over a General Assembly as the appointed president of the Model UN weeklong sessions on global Environmental and Climate change issues with meaning resolutions to the United Nations headquarters in New York in December 2008.
His major accomplishment would be establishing of a record of the vehicular emissions, particularly carbon dioxide concentration levels (a critical gas in the climate change effect) in cities and towns wher ehe has carried out the research and bringing such to the notice of National, states and diplomatic stakeholders. More importantly, only in August 2009, the federal ministry of environment has followed on initiative by sponsoring the extension of the research in all the six geo political zones of the country. The Niger State House of Assembly has received reports of his projects to guide in making appropriate laws to make the state environment healthier and he has also worked with the Kaduna Environmental Protection Agency.
He is a nominee for Champions of the Earth 2010 United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Young Environmental Scientist Awards as well as the Nokia-sponsored International Youth Foundation / LEAP AFRICA National Youth Leadership Award, November, 2009 and the Young Consultant Award Withworth consultancy, London National Youth Awards, November, 2008. Also, sequel to a recent presentation of my initiative research on the climate change effects on the national scene from inception till date, he has been strongly recommended and will be resuming for my post graduate studies in line with my passion for the environment in a specialized research in a university of my choice, and he has been invited to serve under the presidency, Center for Climate Change and Fresh Water Resources in Nigeria. He is also the Vice president of the Millennium Development Goals Society of Africa.
Excerpts of his work can be found on www.nigeria Environmental Society – AfricaFiles | Nigeria
Ojoye Babatunde Olawale
This 17 year old electrical/electronics engineer by training researches into how embedded systems (electronics and micro-electromechanical systems M.E.M.S) can be integrated into our everyday life. This is aimed at designing innovative products, using the science of the operation of these micro-devices coupled with consideration for product ergonomics to solve local (Nigerian) everyday problems. In the past year, he has designed a capillary tube heated jacket (submitted for the “GOOGLE 10^100 project” to promote “GREEN” technology). Heated jackets are not new, but this particular design puts into consideration, millions of Nigerians, mainly in the Northern region who are subjected to extremely cold conditions during the Harmattan weather. Instead of using an energy consuming heating element powered by batteries, the system uses mechanically stored energy in spiral springs and mini-planetary gear systems to drive wearable small sized alternators which power the fibre heaters. Thus it’s affordable by all, and the heating is renewed by winding the spring system by hand, thus making the jacket energy friendly and “GREEN”, with no maintenance cost.
But this nomination is for the design and construction of the P.B.A [Power Back Alarm]. This device has been developed into a product, and it alerts a user of the restoration of power while a power generator or inverter is running, thus cutting unnecessary fuel cost, reducing pollution etc. The Power Back Alarm [PBA] , which has sold several units in Kaduna and Lagos and available in stores, is a product achieved by using established electronic principles to solve existing local power/pollution problem. It was completed in August 2009 and went commercial in October, 2009. His vision for this work is that, while the federal government tackles the complex problem of power generation and distribution, the people embrace smart solutions to reduce fuel expenditure while being responsible global citizens by reducing the pace of global warming. For his work, he understudied the need for a domestic/industrial “power-restored” alert system, compatible with 1 Phase and 3 Phase, the power surge range in Nigeria and how long the Nigerian power problem might persist.
How it works: Once 230V AC power is restored, the 230V/12V transformer steps the voltage down. The voltage regulator limits the supply voltage to +5V for the Micro-Controller to operate. The 4MHz Internal Precision oscillator of the 12F508 chip clocks the program into digital outputs. The initial pre-programmed alert tone melody beeps through a common-emitter transistor configuration for 33 seconds by a 6V-24V buzzer. The device then gives reminder double beeps at 15secs interval. This gives a total of 4.3 minutes of alert time. The reminder beeps helps the user know that the power remains stable and un-cut for a period after its restoration. After this, the microchip commences a sequence of Light Emitting Diode LED flashes which goes on in a unique pre-programmed order.
The device is a fused 4W, 240V device. The AC voltage input was tested over 150V-350V AC through a variable AC supply source. Surge and transient stability were thus confirmed. The P.C.B circuit panel was later confirmed stable and reliable by Glovics Technologies, Hong Kong which is an ISO 9001 certified company. Thus, once power is restored, the Alarm beeps for 4.3 minutes over a 20ft circumference , alerting a person. The alarm later turns off automatically. It is powered by the same source it annunciates. Thus it doesn’t use any battery power and affordable due to its cost. Complete outlook of the device can be seen at http://www.facebook.com/powerbackalarm .
The major difficulty was in ensuring that the design was stable, reliable and rugged. Best suited for the Nigerian environment. Transients and surges in Nigeria’s electricity supply is the reason many Asian manufactured mini-home electronics gadgets don’t last. Also while carrying out the development, he faced the difficulty of using materials that could be locally sourced and were at affordable cost, so that a unique simple idea will not be executed into a complex unaffordable product/result. He had to conduct several test based on the BS [British Standard Code] for electronic gadgets. Extra tolerances had to be put into consideration so as to suit the Nigerian environment. Design materials/components were sourced from the UK, Japan and Hong Kong. The final PCB [Printed Circuit Board] integrity tests were conducted at Glovics Technologies Hong Kong, which is an ISO 9001 certified company. Thus the P.B.A is being sold with a 30,000hrs [3yrs] Warranty on it. To ensure that the final outcome will be relevant to everyone because of affordability, the 3D design of the product exterior was taken round several Nigerian companies until a suitable cost effective locally sourced exterior was implementable. Without sacrificing initial requirements.
The Standards Organisation of Nigeria has visited his in-house research Lab in Narayi High Cost, Kaduna. They commended the idea as being unique and that he should secure its patency. Also that he should pick up a MANCAP registration form, once the mass production commences. He presently has about 15 other documented non-existent electronics ideas for which he am searching for investors.
Tosin Ogunrinde
The 26 year old, in the past year, has worked on the Wi-Fi Detector, A handheld device that detects and displays vital information (network name, MAC address, and signal strength) from wireless local area networks in its range. This is his final year project and his interview was used by the University of Plymouth to showcase the quality of graduates produced is available at: http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/tvb/02-04-09TechProjectOO.wmv. Only a few numbers of projects are videoed yearly, and prototypes are usually much bigger than the final product.
He has also worked on Fiditi, a program that compresses and decompresses text files. The program was written as part of a research he carried out on compression algorithms and programs. Data compression is a vital tool in Information and Communication Technologies as it helps to reduce the storage requirement for example on a hard disk, and bandwidth required to transfer data over a network. Examples of widely used compression software include; WinZip, g-Zip, and 7-Zip. Fiditi was named after his home town in Oyo State.
He also has the Machine Vision Project: For a robot to effectively make decisions it needs to extract the necessary information from the stream of raw data received via its sensors. This project was aimed at discriminating a pen and coin from a raw image using similar techniques used in a production line to check for product defects. Other use includes number and face recognition, to mention just a few. Also there is the Space Exploration Vehicles: This was a group project where he proposed some new ways of exploring Mars using other kinds of space exploration rovers and techniques. Techniques range from using smaller multiple modular rovers with greater autonomy that work and communicate with one.
Then there is the Cutebot 1.0, for which he is nominated. This is a robot designed as part of a bigger research carried out by the University of Plymouth on robot and human interaction. While this was a group project, he was responsible for making Cutebot 1.0 talk. The University of Plymouth is a world leader in cognitive robot research. Video available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1t5ehwdSdE.
Ify Aniebo
Ninety percent of malaria cases and deaths occur in Africa and 85% of malaria related deaths occur in children under 5 years of age. In Nigeria 75 million people or half of the population get attacked by malaria at least once a year while children below five years (around 24 million) get up to four bouts each year. Around 97 percent of the 150 million Nigerians are at risk of infection and 300,000 people die from the disease each year. The 26 year old woman is a research scientist with a BSc in Genetics and an MSc in Applied biomolecular technology. She ave worked in various Top institutes in the UK and is currently studying for a PhD in clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford focusing on Malaria research. Her project involves studying antimalarial resistance by looking at different antimalarial drugs with the focus being artemisinins and different plasmodium falciparum strains (parasite strains) from Africa and south east asia. This is done in the hope of finding a vaccine for the treatment of complicated infections (including cerebral malaria) caused by plasmodium falciparum and hopefully eradicating the disease completely.
In the past year, he has tested plasmodium falciparum strains from Rwanda, Thailand, laos, Cambodia and Bangladesh. She carried out molecular biology techniques such as quantitative PCR and gel electropherisis to check for mutations in certain candidate genes that are important for resistance to antimalarial drugs. She has also cloned those candidate genes and sequenced them for analysis, finding different types of mutations in certain locations. Due to her success in finding candidate genes responsible for resistance, she was given more tasks. Now she is involved in parasite culture using the high throughput equipments at the Sanger institute in Cambridge. She has also designed enzyme assays to study the invasion of parasites to the red blood cell. This helps her understand how the cells take up drugs and how parasites in the blood respond to them. She is also currently designing another biological assay for phenotypic characterization of parasites using a dye called SYBR green.
Her biggest accomplishment would be finding the copy number polymorphisms (mutations) in candidate genes responsible for antimalarial resistance in plasmodium falciparum. It was such a huge success that she presented my work in Thailand to fellow malaria research scientists from Oxford, Mahidol University department of tropical medicine in Thailand and scientists from the World Health Organization. This opened more doors as she now collaborates with other scientist from the WHO, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Mozambique, Laos, Vietnam and Italy (Aquamat studies)
She also spent a year in Thailand carrying out research and field work, a country in which she knows no one, to mostly extract blood (phlebotomy) from patients infected with malaria in the Thai- Laos border and then analysed the samples in the Wellcome trust-Oxford-WHO Laboratory in Bangkok. In Thailand, she attended the 21st Malaria conference in Mae Sot Thailand where she liaised and rubbed minds with top scientists from all over the world including the infamous Dr Dominic Kwiatkowski who is the scientist behind the human genome project(cloning) and who leads the malaria programme at the sanger institute . He was impressed by her profile and was so interested in her research that he gave her an opportunity to continue her work at the prestigious Sanger institute in Cambridge England. She has also collaborated with a research unit in Rwanda after working on Plasmodium Falciparum strains from Rwanda, worked with a motherless children’s home in Bangkok to distribute parasite impregnated bed nets to children in the age 2 -8. (it was televised in Thailand), and next year would carry out research and field work in Nigeria (Ilorin), Mozambique, Kenya and Rwanda.
Very importantly, she got a fully funded Scholarship from the Wellcome trust, the tropical network fund and the Bill and Mellinda Gates Foundation. Over 3000 students applied for this award and after four stages of difficult interviews and tests, she won the scholarship. The fact that she is not a British citizen (born and raised in Lagos) and won this over the thousands of British students in England that applied is remarkable. Her award covers her international student fees, accommodation, college fees allowance and stipend which make a total of £56,000 a year. It also covers her flights in and out of England to Bangkok and surrounding south eastern regions) which in the past year was up to £3000.
Her work is also impressive because, as a PhD student, the normal occurrence for students in the UK is to be solely based in the University carrying out research and maybe once or twice be given the opportunity to go for conferences overseas and present their work. She is also the the youngest person, the only black person and the only Nigerian in the Wellcome-Oxford-WHO unit in Thailand and in the Malaria Department at the Sanger institute in Cambridge.
Godspower Oboido
Born 21 years ago, Gospower’s major work is a magnetic safety bumpers invention. thought about something that would not depend on the driver’s reaction or consciousness. I pictured the guy who was drink driving, the guy who had lost control, and then thinking with the safety bumpers, they still have control anyway because it is an automatic reaction.
How it works: the safety bumpers are intelligent motor bumpers that automatically repel in close range. The bumpers are detachable. Unlike the normal conventional bumpers, this type is made with electromagnets [it can be demagnetized] and retains all laws of magnetism. In physical law of magnetism, unlike poles attract and like poles repel, therefore, with the magnetic safety bumpers, it would be impossible for a car to run into another or crash against another car because of the force field (where the magnetic force or influence is present between both cars).
This invention is 1) to avoid road accidents, since when cars automatically repel and slow down to a halt (automatically) then casualties will be averted as auto crash will be avoided, and 2) traffic control/reduction, since because a force field can not be broken, therefore cars will automatically maintain a safety gap ,thus reducing road traffic. He envisions a situation where, if all cars have safety bumpers on a highway, they would be a fleet of highly patterned vehicles as though they were still assembled in Ford or Nissan’s manufacturing factory and not held in a jam.
Though in its raw stages, the thinking is impressive because the safety bumpers are not dependent on the driver’s consciousness or control, rather they have an automatic demagnetisation that demagnetises on its own when not facing magnets. For instance if a car is heading towards a utility metal pole, the safety bumpers demagnetises on its own, thus losing all magnetic force. This would prevent it from being attracted to the pole. Also, when The magnetic safety bumpers repel Cars, it is the spring balance reaction that prevents the cars from stumbling. The spring balance reaction gives all cars with the safety bumpers a balance so as to prevent an even fatal accident after repulsion. A car that is packed cannot be propelled by the magnetic force of the car behind because of the spring balance reaction. When a car automatically repels, the automatic break system is activated. This is what allows the car to slow down to a halt so that the driver can regain control of the car.
Kamal Olaleye
He is nominated for producing inverters in Nigeria with a slight modification.
Akintunde Babatunde (PhD)
Born in 1978, ‘Tunde an academic and a research engineer. He teaches, supervises and conducts research in the field of civil (environmental) engineering with particular interest in water and wastewater treatment engineering
During his doctoral studies, he pioneered the development of a new and novel constructed wetland wastewater treatment system which uses waste to treat waste and employs passive aeration as opposed to mechanical aeration thereby conserving energy and greatly reducing green house gas emissions. In the past year, he has designed, constructed and started up a pilot scale demonstration of the system to treat wastewater in Ireland courtesy of the award of two research grants totaling over €400,000.00. In addition, he has continued to publish academic papers in high ranking journals as well as make presentations at international conferences and meetings. These are all in addition to his primary duties.
In July 2009, one of his published papers was named as one of the top ten cited papers in the world from the journal of Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology. The article reference is A.O.Babatunde and Y.Q. Zhao, Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, Volume 37, Issue 2, Pages 129-164 . The journal is ranked as the number 1 journal in the world in the field of environmental science and technology.
In August 2009, he won the Green Talents environment technology prize, awarded by the German Research to 15 young scientists from around the world. Two of the winners come from Africa. The international “Green Talents” competition of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) gave him an opportunity to visit the leading environmental technology location Germany, establish new contacts, and build networks with outstanding institutions and companies.
For one week, he took part in “Green Talents – The International Forum for High Potentials in Green Technologies”, travelling throughout Germany, one of the most significant locations for environmental technologies in Europe, visiting leading universities, research institutes, and companies, and gathering specific information about research activities on-site.
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