By Rhonda Massad
Kuper Academy Secondary 5 students Nicolas Theodore and Robert Riachi’s have dazzled McGill engineering and computer science professors with a working prosthetic robotic hand that they built for under $300. The pair’s project won McGill Univesity’s engineering and robotics awards at the Montreal Regional Science and Technology Fair held on March 25 at John Abbott college in St. Anne de Bellevue.
The fair, dubbed Reaching into the Future by its organizers, features the best projects by the region’s English-speaking students. “To round it all up it took about a month,” explained Nicolas Theodore in an interview with The Suburban. “In our division, we had to win first at our high school, which made it possible to compete in the regionals, then we are all marked all over again,” Theodore said.
More than 15,000 young people participated in local or regional finals during this year’s showing, with several West Island sweeping the awards. Lindsey Place High School’s Katie Meyer’s Most Durable Brick project earned distinction, while H2O-filter2go by Rohini Mohanla and Tayseer Vericain walked off with two McGill University awards in the bioresource engineering and geography categories. McGill also honoured West Island College’s Vicky Provias and Gaby Levy’s with an engineering award for their Stairway to Heaven project. Representing Emmanuel Christian School, Kalista Peri’s work on the buffering capacity of soils also received highest distinction as well as McGill’s agricultural and environmental sciences and geography Awards.
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