PM Award

Student Life and Service

1 2 0 2 d r a PM Aw Innovation Competition

We recently received the certificates from the organizers of the

Prime Minister’s Health Innovation competition for high school students which ran from August to January this academic year.

Louis & Prim & Earn did a fabulous job!

In the first time Concordian has ever entered this event (which is in its third year), and out of more than 300 entries received, our team finished in the Top Ten group of finalists! In addition, since one of the team members is in Grade 11, she is eligible to gather a new team for next year and refine or redesign the entry to try again.

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The feedback from judges and mentors was extremely positive about our students. They represented CIS with professionalism & integrity.

Mr. Jamie Martindale Here is what the students have to say about their experience: We first heard about this competition through social media and Thai friends as we, a team of eager juniors, were looking for an out-of-school opportunity for hands-on experiences to expose us to the career fields we planned to enter. With that, we came to the decision to participate in PM Inno Awards 2021-2022. This is the

third year for the event and we hope a team from CIS will enter again next year.

We chose the area related to psychological well-being as topics regarding stress, depression, and anxiety are relatable to our personal experiences, particularly with our prior learning in the IB Psychology course, which is why we asked Mr. Jamie to advise

Student Life and Service

our group. Initially, we had planned to construct a machine that utilized the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) to measure stress.

However, after some group brainstorming, we introduced new elements to our model. This included additions such as the use of Bluetooth connection for self-released calming music and aromas connected to the GSR devices for daily unconscious stress tracking. With our idea and our team’s continued work to improve it, we successfully passed 3 rounds against 300+ teams in Thailand and were selected as finalists against 10 groups.

Balancing the time we would dedicate to the competition and to our IB work was one of the largest challenges to overcome.

As the competition spanned over six months and required an average of 4-12 hours of our time per week, juggling school work, college applications and the competition was a significant obstacle. In addition to conflicting schedules and heavy school workload, we realized that although we had a sufficient understanding of what we needed in order to create our idea, we didn’t have the necessary skills to build it.

Despite these large hurdles, we soon learned how to work around them. To solve the issue of time management, we sought advice from our PM Inno Awards advisors and learned to carefully time each of our workloads, rotating them to ensure that progress was always being made and ensure that team members would have time to rest. To overcome our skill barrier of building the prototype, we regularly set aside time to learn new skills (such as welding) and collaborated with third-party members like the Design Tech teachers who also advised us in our design construction. The key here was teamwork, communication, understanding one another's feelings and trusting the process.

These are our most important takeaways: You must make a choice to take a chance or your life will never change. - Louis This competition has been a tiring but fulfilling experience. I‘ve met so many interesting new people and have been able to collaborate with teachers and friends for this project. I’m extremely grateful to be able to have the opportunity to participate in this activity, and am glad to be able to take back new lessons from the obstacles we’ve overcome. - Prim “The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.” - Alexander Graham Bell - Earn I am so proud of these students! They represented Concordian incredibly well, especially since this was the first time our school has entered an event like this. Their good ideas, teamwork, and determination were particularly inspiring. - Mr. Jamie Hopefully, we’ll make contact with the new generation soon, for PM Inno Awards 2022-2023!

Contact: louist_2022@concordian.org, prima_2022@concordian.org, earnc_2023@concordian.org

Thanks to Ms. Veronika Kang-Portillo and Mr. Brian Macy for also assisting with sponsorship duties.

Louis, Prim and Earn

Two Concordian G12 Students Chosen

to visit CERN

Two

Scan this QR Code for more information from the Synchrotron Light Reserch Institute website page

https://www.slri.or.th/thaicern/

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CERN (CERN) or The European Organization for Nuclear Research, located in Geneva, Switzerland, is an international organization established with the objective of global fundamental physics research. CERN is a world-class fundamental physics research institute. and plays an important role in raising awareness and disseminating knowledge of particle physics and is home to some of the world's leading researchers, engineers and physicists in design.

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Concordian G12 students, Pun Pun and Nicky, both Concordians since the Early Years, were among 12 finalists from top schools in Thailand to be selected by H. R. H. Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn to join the high school visit program at the CERN Collaboration Program in Geneva, Switzerland under the initiative of H.R.H. Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. Our Concordian students who represented Thailand at the 34th International Young Physicists Tournament 2021 were amongst the 26 students who were eligible for an interview. Congratulations Pun Pun and Nicky!