Teens pitch million-dollar ideas at SPISE

Imagine a high school summer programme where students design wearable medical tech, build robots, and pitch startup ideas to judges with $1 million in mock investment funds.

That’s exactly what happened at the 14th Student Programme for Innovation in Science and Engineering (SPISE), where 20 of the Caribbean’s brightest teens, including two from Haiti for the first time, showcased creative projects at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill.

Hosted by the Caribbean Science Foundation (CSF), the five-week intensive programme immersed students in university-level calculus, physics and biochemistry, alongside hands-on projects in coding, electronics and entrepreneurship. Despite many being new to the tools, teams delivered impressive results.

Projects ranged from an alarm system, Amp-Alert, produced by the team Amped-Up Circuit Breakers, to a remote-controlled Earth rover modelled after NASA’s Mars Rover by the Fast and Curious team.

“The entrepreneurship project is a mini business pitch,” explained Dr Dinah Sah, co-executive director of the CSF and Director of SPISE. “The students come up with a STEM-based business idea and create a pitch for it.”

Judges, including Paul Inniss, executive vice president and general manager of Sagicor Life Barbados, and Professor Cardinal Warde, interim executive director of the CSF,  received $1 million in “fake” investment funds to back their favourites. Students fielded tough questions about the viability of their products in their bid to secure funding.

The top-earning pitch came from ScolioSolutions, whose ScolioFix Brace offers a sleek, adjustable alternative to traditional scoliosis supports, designed to grow with the patient.

Among the participants were 17-year-old Sariah McClean of The St Michael School and Accalia Ince of Harrison College.

Ince relished the academic challenge. “I have seen myself grow; I have learned so much about myself. I have become more confident,” she told Barbados TODAY. “I have learnt so much material in such a short space of time. I think the bonds I have made here with people from all over the Caribbean are something I can’t find anywhere else.”

“Biochemistry was something I had never done in my life, and it was really cool to have such an in-depth class about it,” McClean said.

With hopes of studying electrical engineering and computer science, her electronics project was especially meaningful. 

“We made an assistive piece of technology for visually impaired people. It’s a sensor that beeps whenever the person is close to an object,” she said. (STT)