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Year 10 pupil Ashwin Sridhar’s design for a doorstep smart box to stop delivery packages being stolen has won a top prize in an international competition.

Ashwin’s device, which he named the Raptor Adversus, uses a host of measures to thwart thieves trying to gain access to packages inside – and even sounds the alarm if anyone tries to steal the whole box.

The Raptor Adversus won him the Best in Show, Senior Division Europe award, in SAM Labs’ STEAM and Coding Creators Competition. Through the global competition, SAM Labs – a UK-based company making app-enabled construction kits widely used in education – challenged pupils in Covid-19 lockdown to showcase their coding projects.

Ashwin’s award was announced in a global awards livestream broadcast.

Congratulating him, QE Head of Technology Michael Noonan said: “Ashwin’s competition entry was well illustrated and included an account of the three different iterations of his device, thus demonstrating that he had worked very methodically to tackle the problem of package-stealing.”

The competition submission began by outlining the problem. “Online delivery has been integrated into our society,” Ashwin wrote. “Forbes estimates the average person in the United States receives up to 21 packages a year. However, with online delivery’s increase in popularity, a new epidemic has arisen – package-stealing.”

Using CAD software, Ashwin designed a device aimed not only at preventing thefts, but also at deterring thieves from even making the attempt.

His Raptor Adversus (meaning ‘against a thief’) design features:

• A motorised safe door opened with a passcode known to the homeowner and shared with the postman or delivery person
• An audible alarm
• A camera
• A tilt-and-pressure sensor
• Coloured indicator lights coded to indicate whether or not the box is empty and whether a letter or parcel is inside.

His initial iteration was designed to take a photo and send it to the homeowner’s phone when anyone used, or attempted to use, the passcode system. The alarm would sound – drawing the attention of people in the area, in case the person at the box was a would-be thief. Only then, after a delay, would the box open.

Ashwin realised that this would only deter thieves who were actually attempting to open the box, so his first refinement was to include a proximity sensor (with a range that could be adjusted by the owner) that would sound an alarm and take a photo of anyone who got close.

In the third iteration, he added the tilt sensor to sound an alarm if anyone tried to remove the whole box.

A QE trio have won a major prize in a digital competition focused on the future of space travel.

The team, who are all from the same Year 9 Pearce form group, took the Innovation Award in the Galactic Challenge One Small Step competition with their design for a vehicle to explore the Moon’s surface in 2030 in preparation for establishing a human settlement there.

Several other QE teams and individuals also won awards in the competition, which was organised by a team led by Old Elizabethan Aadil Kara (2010–2017), who is Chair of Galactic Challenge.

Last year, QE hosted a Galactic Challenge event at the School and had planned to do so again this summer until the Covid-19 restrictions forced its cancellation. Instead, Galactic Challenge ran the special digital competition.

QE’s Head of Physics, Jonathan Brooke, said: “This was an exciting competition, requiring boys to exhibit creativity and scientific understanding. And at a time when everyone’s horizons have been shrunk because of lockdown, it also gave boys a timely opportunity to turn their gaze to the stars.”

Entrants were asked to produce a design for a vehicle that would be home to four astronauts during a six-month mission, taking into account factors such as how electrical power would be provided and what would be needed to support the astronauts’ living conditions.
Vignesh Rajiv, Maxwell Johnson and Sai Sivakumar took the Innovation Award – one of only four major prizes open to their age group. They proposed HNHV, the Helium-3 Noisu Habitation Vehicle (pictured right and left).

In their award citation, the competition judges explained why they had chosen the team’s entry: “This interesting proposal identified Helium-3 as a potential material to be mined from the Moon as a future energy source. Vignesh, Maxwell and Sai’s design consisted of two halves each housing two astronauts; a creative way to separate the operational and habitable components of the vehicle.”

Aadil has a longstanding involvement with Galactic Challenge, a regional competition for younger pupils and a sister competition to the UK Space Design Competition (UKSDC). In his final year at QE, Aadil progressed from the UKSDC to the International Space Settlement Design Competition, hosted by NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Aadil graduates from Imperial College in Physics this summer.

Other QE successes in the competition included:

• Gold awards for two entries – Koustuv Bhowmick, of Year 8, and Krishn Bhowmick, of Year 7, for their VIXI design, and Vaibhav Gaddi, of Year 8, for his vehicle, which he named Caladenia Elegans (the elegant orchid spider)
• Silver awards to two Year 7 teams and a Year 8 team – Azmeer Shahid, Shuban Singh, Shivam Trivedi and Anish Errapothu, for Dark Voyager (pictured top); Daksh Vinnakota, Ved Nair, Ojas Jha and Keon Robert for Spatium Rimor I, and Year 8’s Ishtarth Katageri, Sachit Kori, Anirudh Terdal and Abhay Halyal for ML Pioneer
• Bronze awards for two entries – Pranav Haller, of Year 8, for his design, The Hermes, and Year 7’s Giuseppe Mangiavacchi, Trishan Chanda, Timi Banjo and Rayan Pesnani for Luna Rimor.

A QE competition inviting boys in lockdown to write essays or design posters about figures who helped others through previous times of adversity drew entries featuring a huge variety of inspirational men and women.

From Winston Churchill to Colonel Sanders (of KFC fame), and from civil rights activist Rosa Parks to the Prophet Muhammad, boys from the first three years at the School spanned the centuries and ranged across the world with their chosen topics.

And the subjects of the three winning entries – who were all women – equally had very different stories, with one being a world-famous scientist, one an Irish-born teacher who became an influential spokesperson promoting Indian national consciousness, and the third the heroine of an aeroplane hijacking.

The competition for Years 7-9 was run and judged by the School’s four Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Ambassadors, Sharvash Jeyaharan, Beker Shah, Vebushan Sukumar and Ukendar Vadivel, all of Year 12.

“We were amazed by the number of high-quality responses from all years,” they said in a joint statement as the results were announced.

In launching the competition, which they entitled TALK, the ambassador team had stated: “The past few weeks have been filled with uncertainty, disappointment and complete confusion. It can be hard to find courage and resilience in this time, but humanity has always bounced back.” They invited boys to write an essay of no more than 1,000 words or design an A4 poster featuring “someone from history that has shown strength and determination in hard times, who inspires you today”.

Year 7 winner Trishan Chanda wrote about Margaret Elizabeth Noble, who was born in Dungannon but became a follower of the Indian spiritual leader, Vivekananda. She devoted her life to service in India, where she ran a school, helped the poor during times of natural disaster and became involved in working towards India’s political emancipation. Her health broken by her efforts, she died aged only 43 in 1911.  The ambassadors praised Trishan for “writing a compelling piece about someone not well-known”.

By contrast, Year 8 winner Chanul Athukoralage’s subject was one of the world’s best-known scientists, Marie Curie, who was the first woman ever to win a Nobel Prize and who remains the only person to have won a Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields – Physics and Chemistry.

The judge’s praised Chanul’s “eye-catching” poster and described the Polish (and naturalised-French) pioneer of research into radioactivity, who died in 1934, as “an inspiration to the aspiring scientists of today”. In what Chanul described as the “greatest comeback science will ever see”, she overcame the devastating death of her scientist husband Pierre Curie in an accident in 1906 and went on to take the University of Paris chair that had been created for her husband and to win her second Nobel Prize.

Dhruv Chadha, the winning entrant from Year 9, related the story of Pan Am head purser, Neerja Bhanot, from India, who was shot and killed while saving passengers on her hijacked flight during a stopover in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1986. Earlier in the flight, she had hidden the passports of passengers on the flight so that the hijackers could not identify American passengers, whom they were targeting. When, after 17 hours, the hijackers opened fire and set off explosives, she opened one of the aircraft’s doors and started helping passengers escape, but was shot at point-blank range. “The story of her selflessness and humanity is moving – sacrificing her life for the 384 passengers of a hijacked plane,” the judges said.

The winners are being congratulated by their Heads of Year in their virtual assemblies. You can see their entries here: Trishan Chanda, 7U, Chanul Athukoralage, 8S and Dhruv Chadha, 9L.

Sixth-former Mansimar Singh has won a national essay competition with his plea for the UK Government to do more to make Britain economically stronger in a post-Brexit world.

Mansimar’s entry took the top prize in the first-ever essay competition for schools to be run by TEAMGlobal, an independent educational foundation.

Entrants had to write a maximum of 1,500 words on the question: ‘Following the 2019 election, Boris Johnson urged “let the healing begin”. What do you suggest could be done to bring this about?’

He was inspired to enter by his interest in politics: “More specifically, I was interested in researching what an independent Britain would be like for myself and other young people and Boris Johnson’s plan for Britain after Brexit.”

Head of History & Politics Helen MacGregor said: “We have been encouraging our pupils not only to continue their curricular studies through the lockdown, but also to maintain their academic interests beyond the curriculum. Mansimar’s essay is an excellent example of this, and his success is richly deserved.”

In his 1,463-word composition, he cited sources including the House of Commons Library, the Office for National Statistics and the Financial Times.

Through his research, he says he developed “a greater understanding about how each industry in the UK has been uniquely impacted by Brexit, and the various complexities involved in revitalising and preparing them for operation in an independent Britain”.

TEAMGlobal – The European Atlantic Movement – is a charity that aims to enable young people to act as global citizens, empowering them to consider world issues and to play their part in resolving problems and promoting solutions.

The competition was open to all Year 12 students. Mansimar’s £200 cash prize and a certificate are being sent to the School so they can be presented to him once the School reopens to more pupils. The prize also includes an invitation to a future TEAMGlobal Members’ Day, including tea at the House of Lords.

“My analysis of this research and my own opinions ultimately formulated my response to the essay,” Mansimar said. His main contentions were that:

• “The Government must increase an independent UK’s attractiveness for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to minimise the short to medium-term impacts on the economy and, in the long term, prepare it to become less reliant upon the EU.”
• This can be achieved by building upon the UK’s existing ‘knowledge economy’ by increasing the skills of young people in education through increased school funding and greater equality of opportunity in accessing alternatives to university, such as high-quality apprenticeships.
• The “underlying socioeconomic factors behind the Brexit vote”, such as regional inequalities, need to be addressed by significantly investing in communities outside the typical investment hotspots, such as London.
• This should, in turn, be achieved by delivering on the Prime Minister’s promise of a ‘transport revolution’ to help increase the mobility of labour, preventing it from concentrating within a few, small regions.
• Existing jobs must be protected and further job creation encouraged by revitalising local industries, attracting greater investment in growing sectors and maintaining the strengths of well-established ones, such as the financial sector.

All of this, he concluded, would “act as an engine that will fuel future economic growth in an independent Britain, but, crucially, the benefits of future economic progress will be more evenly spread and will help previously struggling communities to thrive”.

Read Mansimar’s essay here.

A new podcast series from The Queen’s Library starts with a look at the contemporary challenge of climate change, while Library staff have also put together a lavishly illustrated historical account of a Londoner facing a pandemic even worse than the present one.

Both the podcast and the account – about Samuel Pepys and the Great Plague of 1665 – are part of an extensive selection of content curated by Head of Library Services Surya Bowyer for boys to access during the pandemic lockdown.

The 27-minute first episode of the podcast series, entitled Roundness, looks at the issue of climate change, examining evidence from around the world and taking as its starting point President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. It features audio clips and music, as well as a commentary from Mr Bowyer.

The podcast, which is available on subscription from online providers including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, quotes experts from a range of disciplines, including investment bank Morgan Stanley’s chief executive, James Gorman, who recently told a congressional committee: “If we don’t have a planet, we’re not going to have a very good financial system.”

The podcast may also be accessed from the Library’s pages on eQE – the School’s portal for boys, parents, staff and other members of the Elizabethan community.

The Library’s extensive eQE section includes a Book of the Week, as well as a host of other recommended reading on the Lockdown Reading page, some of it recommended for particular age groups, some suitable for all.

“There are quick links to huge selections of free e-books and to free audiobooks. And there is our own Virtual Culture guide to virtual museums and galleries for lockdown and beyond,” says Mr Bowyer.

The Arabella magazine, a publication produced by pupils and featuring pupils’ own written and visual contributions, is hosted by the Library’s eQE section.

Mr Bowyer adds: “One coping strategy when we face a crisis like Covid-19 is to document our experiences in some way. More than 350 years ago, that was exactly what Samuel Pepys, a young civil servant living in London, did in his diary when the capital was hit by the Great Plague in 1665 – the worst epidemic in England since the Black Death of 1348. His reaction, and that of his fellow Londoners, is set out in our Pepys and the plague page.”

The page features 12 illustrations, most of them contemporaneous drawings, as well as extracts from Pepy’s diary detailing what he saw and heard – “so many poor sick people in the streets full of sores” – and the gradual recovery over many months until, in February 1666, London was deemed safe enough for King Charles II and his court to return.

The twin importance of message and method in fighting climate change was brought to the fore in the two winning entries in the Geography department’s Earth Day competitions.

The competitions were held to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, an annual event celebrated around the world on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection.

With this year’s Earth Day theme being Climate Action, the winner of the writing competition emphasised the importance of using the right people to convey environmental messages, while the victor in the parallel photography competition emphasised the positive impact that even small steps could have.

Head of Geography Emily Parry said: “Well done to all of the boys who entered the competitions. It was impressive to see the boys engage with the enormous challenge of climate change and heartening to see their appreciation of the wonder of our planet and passion for it to be protected.”

The first task was to write in 500 words or less an answer in response to the question: How can we save our planet from climate change? The second was for boys to submit a photograph they had taken illustrating the impact, for good or ill, of humans on ecosystems, accompanied by a 100-word explanation.

Ananth Iyer, of Year 8, took the prize for the photography competition with his striking image of a bird feeder in his back garden. He explained his choice of subject: “It celebrates the positive impact that humans can have on our environment. It can provide food for birds and all sorts of other animals when they are finding it tough. Small things like these can have a huge impact.”

Congratulating Ananth, Miss Parry said: “We appreciated the simplicity of Ananth’s photograph and how it showed that it is possible for anyone to take a small action which can have a positive impact upon ecosystems.”

First prize for the writing competition went to Rahul Doshi, of Year 10, who submitted an argument that insufficient numbers of people are aware of the threat of climate change.

“Rahul creatively answered the question How can we save our planet from climate change? by recognising that it is first necessary for everyone to accept that climate change is actually a threat! He draws attention to the importance of having messengers, such as David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg, to effectively communicate climate science to people of all ages and backgrounds,” said Miss Parry.

Rahul proposed the use of respected messengers to increase recognition. He wrote: “With over 46% of UK citizens believing that the threat is overstated and 10% completely denying that humans are to blame for climate change, it is clear that not enough people currently are aware of the threat climate change poses to our planet. There needs to be a big push to get messengers – people who we all relate to – to get this message across. If we do not, this planet faces a grave future.”

The competitions were launched on Earth Day on 22 April through eQE and were accompanied by tips and links to websites with suggestions for background reading material. These ranged from National Geographic’s suggestions for lightening our ecological load to an Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) article about how to build a bug house.