Special to IFN
South Iredell High School was selected as the state winner for North Carolina in Samsung’s National STEM Competition.
State winners are awarded a $12,000 Samsung technology prize package, including a Samsung Video Kit to showcase their proposed STEM solution.
South Iredell and the other 50 winners are moving forward in the 15th annual Samsung Solve for Tomorrow national STEM competition.
Visual impairment affects many in South Iredell High School’s community, yet existing assistive technologies are often costly and inaccessible, particularly in low-resource areas. To address the challenge of improving the daily lives of visually impaired people, the winning team is developing “The AI Eye,” an affordable, wearable device designed to assist visually impaired individuals. The solution leverages AI and machine learning to create a real-time object recognition system that provides audio descriptions of the environment to assist visually impaired persons by improving their quality of life.
Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is a national competition designed to empower students in grades 6-12 to unleash the power of STEM to create innovative solutions addressing critical issues in their local communities. The competition engages these Gen Z and Gen Alpha students in active, hands-on learning that can be applied to real-world problems – making STEM more tangible and showcasing its value both in and outside of the classroom.
As a group, this year’s State Winners showed that they are most concerned with environmental sustainability and climate disasters (28%), public health (26%), and accessibility (20%), followed by public safety and mental health.
State winner entries embraced cutting-edge technologies like AI (42%), 3D printing (34%), and robotics (14%) to bring their ideas to life.
Moving Forward
Based on their pitch videos, 10 National Finalists will be chosen to participate in a live pitch event and present their project to a panel of judges. Seven of these schools will be awarded $50,000 in Samsung technology and classroom supplies.
Based on the live pitch presentations, judges will name three National Winners, each earning a $100,00 prize package.