By Randy Trammell   

An independent student inventor from Georgia Tech’s K-12 InVenture Prize State Finals took home top honors at the Raytheon Technologies Invention Convention U.S. Nationals Award Ceremony on June 5 in Dearborn, Michigan at The Henry Ford.    

Arman Shpuza, inventor of Ampipe, won a Patent Application Award as well as Second Place for Ninth Grade. The invention is a tiny turbine system installed in downspouts that converts the energy of falling rain into electricity.   

“We are so proud of all of our students who represented our state at U.S. Nationals,” said Danyelle Larkin, director of the K-12 InVenture Prize program. “Team Ampipe was an independent student competing for the first time in the competition, and he earned an application for a patent to take the invention to the marketplace. You really can’t do much better than that. What an amazing accomplishment this is from such a self-driven young student.”    

At this year’s Invention Convention U.S. Nationals, competing student inventors had the chance to engage with representatives from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. They also had the opportunity to pitch their inventions to Shark Tank casting agents and participate in a youth panel discussion. An affiliate of Invention Convention Worldwide, K-12 InVenture Prize reserves a number of spots to invite select student teams from State Finals to represent Georgia at the U.S. Nationals competition each year.    

The K-12 InVenture Prize, based in the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC), challenges kindergarten through high school students to identify real-world problems and design novel solutions through analysis, creativity, and the engineering design process.    

For more information on the K-12 InVenture Prize competition, please visit https://k12inventure.gatech.edu.