3/1/23 February Oswego East InvenTeam Progress Update

What has the team been up to?

The focus of our efforts in February was a combination of creating our prototype and compiling our progress to date for the Mid-Grant Review. We began the year by evaluating our device design, improving it and ordering more necessary materials, such as sensors and wood. Also, we began planning displays for our Mid-Grant Review and started sending out invites to teachers, school board members and local politicians. During this time period, we successfully put together our first prototype and started collecting lots of helpful data. However, there were still improvements to be made as we need to work on the overall dimension of the device and some of the electronics. On the prototype, we added stickers to represent all of our sponsors such as Lemlson-MIT, Fox.Build Makerspace and our school. 

We harvested algae biomass and created a bioplastic version of the MIT Great Dome building! By this time, we had spent a good amount of our budget at 68%. For the MTGR, we decided on a layout of poster boards, allowing us to do both an open-house style walk-around and a formal presentation. We held our MTGR on February 24th at 6-8pm and we are proud to say it was a success! We had around ~40 guests including local politicians, teachers, and family. This was a very fun experience as we raised awareness and support for our project while also getting to show off all of our hard work. It went so well, in fact, that we will be recognized by the Kendall County board at their monthly meetings with a plaque.

Above you can see our team presenting and the many guests present at our mid-grant review. Our focus for the rest of February was evaluating our performance and planning for the coming months. 

What do we hope to accomplish in the upcoming weeks?

As EurekaFest approaches we are getting more and more busy! Our main focus for the months of March and April are getting together our showcase prototype, a testing chamber and a provisional patent. We are currently in the works of making a prototype with improvement to our previous design and  one that can be used for display and has a clean form factor. We are also making a custom testing chamber for our device to prove its effectiveness. The patent application will help protect our invention and give it validity. The final step is to begin planning for EurekaFest and putting together displays and our presentation. We are so excited to go to the beautiful campus of MIT and we could not be more grateful for this opportunity and community. Thank you all so much for your support and please reach out to us if you have a question!