STEM-In-Action Fall Follow-Up: JANS

We've got that feel-good feeling this Friday, and there's only one reason why: it's STEM-In-Action Fall Follow-Up day! If you're new here, (first, welcome!) every Friday this Fall we have been catching up with our SIA grant recipient teams to see how their projects have progressed since attending our National Judging & Educational Event (NJ&EE) back in June. The U.S. Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) STEM-In-Action Grant awards eCYBERMISSION teams up to $5,000 to develop their projects into mature and scalable solutions in their community. Normally, we award this honorary grant to five teams, but this year ten teams took home the prestigious award. 

We've been catching up each week to see the teams' amazing progress and this week is no exception. As we are headquartered in the Washington, D.C. area, we're keeping it local and heading over to our neighbors, Team J.A.N.S. from Ashburn, VA. We cannot wait to hear what's new with them...

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This is Team J.A.N.S, from Stone Hill Middle School in Ashburn, Virginia. We have received the Stem In Action Grant, a grant given to teams with the best plans to turn their idea into reality and implement their solution to their community to solve the problem that they had targeted and attempted to solve during the competition.

In school, our teacher and Team Advisor introduced us to eCYBERMISSION. After signing up for this competition, we began developing an idea that we thought could benefit our community. 

Speaking of which, have you wondered how many people suffer from waterborne diseases? To this date, about 780 million (yes MILLION!) people don’t have clean drinking water. Out of those unfortunate individuals, 1.6 million live in the U.S. This is why we attempted to solve this problem. The growing number is concerning and we want to bring clean water to those who need it.

During the competition, we began researching and accumulating information on pollutants and filtration materials and we created our prototype: the Stack-o-Filter! The Stack-o-Filter is a customizable and stackable filter that enables the user to use natural resources to filter their water. The user finds natural resources, puts them inside of our Stack-o-Filter, and pour water from the top.

Now, with our Stem in Action Grant, we are planning to improve our design to be more user friendly. Our design is made of durable 3D filament which can last the majority of different conditions. We are also planning on experimenting with more filter materials to expand on the efficiency of these filter materials and put them in our guide, which will go along with our canister design upon distribution. We will include testing strips along with our canister and guide to give the user the ability to test their water.

We would like to thank eCYBERMISSION for this opportunity to take our idea, improve on it and then implement it in our community. We’ll be coming back soon to share our results.

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It's not surprise to hear that we are in awe once again at these students ingenuity, creativity and sheer intellect! Team J.A.N.S. To hear they are continuing to take strides to give their community cleaner drinking water in a more accessible way is just amazing. We cannot wait to see what kind of progress is made for their community's drinking water in the Spring!

-Mission Control

Colleen Minan
AEOP Communications & Marketing Specialist
cminan@nsta.org