This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly. 

Harker’s InvenTeam visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in June for this year’s EurekaFest, an annual event held by Lemelson-MIT for young inventors. 2012 graduates Prag Batra, Sachin Jain and Arihant Jain, along with grade 12 students Shantanu Joshi, Wilbur Yang and Ramakrishnan Menon and grade 11 student Nikhil Dilip, were at the event to showcase the invention that won them funding in this year’s InvenTeam contest. Their project, an aquatic thermoelectric generator that can produce solar energy without the need for expensive panels, won them a $9,110 grant in the fall of last year to build a prototype.

During their time at the event, the team toured MIT’s wind tunnels and fusion lab, and participated in a 20-minute design challenge in which they were randomly placed into teams which were then instructed to build a free-standing structure made with balloons. They also attended presentations that showed them how to market their inventions, and saw presentations by the collegiate and industrial winners of the InvenTeam competition.