Strawberry Crest High School graduate Aarushi Pant traveled to Paris for the first time, but not as an Olympic athlete. Instead, she was honored for her work in Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow STEM competition.
Last year, Pant and her team won the national competition with the Human Health Band, a device that protects athletes from the heat by monitoring their temperature through their uniforms.
The device in the athletes’ uniforms transmits information to their coaches’ phone to alert the coaches when the athletes are overheating. This topic was especially important to the Strawberry Crest team since one of their classmates died from heat illness in 2019.
Pant’s teammates got to go to Washington, D.C., last summer, but this summer she was selected as an ambassador for the new digital community initiative, ‘Together for Tomorrow, Enabling People.’
As one of 10 representatives from around the world, Pant attended the launch event and conference hosted in Paris.
“They said it was really great idea,” Pant said about the feedback she received. “They said they were surprised that this hadn’t been come up with before because it’s such a simple but effective solution to heat-related illnesses.”
During her visit, she got to travel Paris with her father, watch the Olympics and collaborate with the International Olympic Committee Young Leaders team.
“I was really grateful for the opportunity,” she said. “I got to make some really great connections with the other ambassadors from Samsung as well from different parts of the world.”
Now, as a freshman at the University of Florida, Pant will continue to work with Samsung through its new alumni program.
Pant said this wouldn’t have been possible without the support of her teacher at Strawberry Crest, Christina Rutledge, who introduced her to the Solve for Tomorrow competition. She also credited the help of her teammates, who she worked with to invent the device.
“So, I think it’s really important that students are exposed to STEM at a young age, such as in high school, like how we got to do it at Strawberry Crest,” she said.
For more information on Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow STEM competition, visit www.samsung.com/us/solvefortomorrow.
