University female college students from the science and technology colleges from major universities in Ethiopia were awarded by STEM Synergy. The criteria used to select these female students were based on the following rubrics

• Female students who have used the scientific method properly, that is experiment oriented and apply the theoretical knowledge got to solve societal problems;
• Have demonstrated good methods and products or solutions in STEM fields;
• Outstanding female students in STEM fields with innovative scientific, technological, and /or engineering project solutions or products,

In this regard, each university selects one candidate who is the best performing female student in the  STEM fields.  The selection of students was conducted by the respective university.  And the selected female students came to take their Award in Addis Ababa in the consultative workshop organized by MOSHE, for this will help inspire and motivate female students to pursue in STEM fields. The workshop was held at Adama University. The ceremony was attended by university Presidents, vice presidents, STEM center coordinators and STEM stack holders.  Professor Afework – State minister of MOSHE was handed over the laptops given to the awardees.

Biographies and accomplishment of each finalist is illustrated below in their own words.

 

 

1 .  Full Name: Sumeya Hussein Seid

Name of university: Jimma University

Department: Electrical and computer engineering Year: 2021

Project work summary:

I have participated in many projects during my stay at Jimma university but the project with which I have been selected for the STEM award is READING ASSISTANCE FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED PERSONS, Which is a standalone device that enables visually impaired persons to read printed materials in Amharic and English language. What is required from the user is to place the book to be read on the stand and press the start button. The device will start with a welcoming speech and pass to the oral menu where the user will select the language of the book. Then the device will capture the image of the opened pages of the book. The captured image passes through different image processing sub-stages for the removal of noise, image adjustment, and binarization. The binary image is feed to the optical character recognition (OCR) stage where each character on the image going to be labeled and the resulting text is passed to the next stage. Text to speech (TTS)  converts the text in to speech. The recitation of the book (speech) is played on the output audio media like headphones, speakers… etc

The implementation of this project helps visually-impaired people in reading printed materials, reduces their dependency on others at the time of studding (reading) and creates a convenient academic and/or working environment for visually impaired people. The device can be used in libraries, offices, at home …etc. The implementation of this project will also emphasize the role of visually-impaired people in the development of their country, as reading is key for knowledge acquiring and lifestyle improvement.

 

E mail: [email protected]

 

2. Full Name : Abigya sisay

Name of university: Haramaya university

Department: Biology;  Year: 3rd

Project work summary:  Wildlife’s faced a range of threats. However, little information is known about the type, pattern, and extent of these threats. Understanding these issues is crucial in prioritizing conservation strategies and taking appropriate mitigation measures for the effective protection of wildlife.  Therefore, this review was aimed at identifying key wildlife threats factors operating against natural capital such as habitat loss, climate change, invasive and exotic species, pollution, illegal trapping, and poaching.

E mail: [email protected]

3. Full Name: Kena Adam

Name of university: Adama Science and Technology University

Department: Architecture

Year: 2021

Project work summery

Architecture is not only the art and science of buildings but also it is the art of solving problems. During the 5 years of being an architect, I got to design a residential house, apartment, industry, and even a hospital for our school projects and through these projects, I got to explore numerous fields of studies, social and technological aspects which helped me be more thoughtful of problems that I could solve. Which is how my thesis BIOPHILIC ARCHITECTURE, ENERGY EFFICIENT MIXED-USE BUILDINGcame to progress.

High energy consumption and its associated environmental issues are critical matters of concern, and buildings are one of the main reasons for these problems. A building’s lifecycle energy comprises its embodied and operational energy. In our case where there is a poverty of energy, our buildings did not perform well whether in minimizing the usage and the cost of energy. Global warming and climate change are raising issues during the last couple of decades. Buildings including commercial and residential ones are major contributors to energy consumption, and this increases on a yearly basis due to the increased human comfort needs and services.

The choices we make for our cities can transform these challenges into opportunities. Future buildings will focus more on renewable and sustainable energy resources by implementing an efficient building envelope and utilizing energy-efficient and high-performing utilities promoting reduced energy consumption levels. Future design will benefit from various potential energy resources including solar, wind, tidal, biomass, and other resources. Here having those kinds of buildings will help us to contribute to the nature with minimum cost and get an environment which is free from pollution and well-functioning buildings.

E mail: [email protected]

 

4 .   Full Name: Eden Andarge

Name of University: Arbaminch Institute Technology

Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering;  Year: 5^th

Project Summary: Electric fan is one of the most well-known electrical devices because of its cost-effectiveness and low power consumption advantages. The fan can be turned on and off physically by using the switch button. Where right now, a change in the temperature won’t give any adjustment in the fan speed. So, an automatic temperature control system technology is necessary for the controlling speed of fans according to the temperature changes.

In our country especially in rooms switching on or off electrical fans is still commonly made by manual switches Hence, people are becoming so busy that they forgot to turn off switches after leaving the room. The world temperature is increasing rapidly so new technology is required to adapt to this varying temperature the need for an automatic system is the concern of today’s technology.

There are two functions in this system. Switching on and off control according to the command that comes from the android application and Speed control of the fan according to temperature set. Fan speed will be changed automatically according to temperature using DHT 11 sensor and the fan will be turned on when the temperature will appear to on the temperature set value and when a command comes from the android application. The fan will be turned off when the temperature reaches to the minimum temperature set or when an “OFF†command comes from the android application. Temperature and speed information will be displayed in a LED screen. The temperature sensor (DHTT 11) will sense the room temperature. The speed of the fan is controlled by using an Arduino microcontroller and android application according to the room temperature.

Email:[email protected]

 

5. Full Name:Epheson Belay

Name of university: Bahir Dar institution of Technology

Department: ElectricalEngineering (control engineering stream)

Year of study: 5^th year

Project work summary:

Delta 3D printer A kind of 3D printer with Z–axis movement, each arm can only move vertically up and down, but by moving each arm independently the extruder is able to move in all directions. It’s different from the cartesian model because of the only axis it uses is the z-axis and it allows us to print bigger and longer designs without thinking about the Hight, at the meantime all the part of the printer is 3d printed material (the printer prints it own parts and build step by step) except the electrical components and some metallic parts. This project an allow students do actual prototypes by printing there designed and also it reduces waste plastid because the raw material that will be used by adding it and heated to create a desired shape is PLA materials like water bottles which are currently becoming waste product because of improper deposal, it will be recycled and become a raw material for the 3D printer machine.

E mail: [email protected]

 

6. Full name: Samrawit Erena

Name of university: Hawassa University

Department: Computer Science

Year of study: 4^th year

Project work summary:

Title: AI-Powered Rose Disease Classification system using Deep Learning

This system classifies whether a rose flower is diseased/infected or not. The system is unique because there is no such system to help the current manual scanning process for a disease which takes a lot of manpower and consumes time. The deep learning model has an accuracy of 99.9% and can predict whether a scanned flower is diseased or not with a 99.9 accuracy percent. This deep learning model can be improved to help in the agriculture of our country. For example, we can train our model to identify fruits, vegetables, and other agriculture and horticulture products like onion and coffee beans so it can be easier and faster to detect the diseased once and reduce the loss for many companies and for the agriculture producers in our country. Moreover, this project minimizes man labor by reducing the time and power needed to detect and identify the diseases, reduces mistakes in disease prediction, increases gain and decreases loss of the companies and farmers, and most importantly increases the income of Ethiopia from agriculture export by reducing the product loss. This system is expected to be the first in cooperating technology with agriculture in Ethiopia since there is almost no technology that supports the farmers and companies in our country.

E-mail : [email protected]

 

7. Full Name: Hana Muluneh

Name of university: Kotebe Metropolitan University

Department: Biology;  Year: 3^rd            

Project work summary: Medicinal plants are integral components of ethnoveterinary medicines. The application of traditional medicine to veterinary medicine has been termed as ethnoveterinary medicine. The objective of the study was to assess medicinal plants used in ethnoveterinary around Dheeraa town.  In this study, 45 respondents were involved (34 males and 11 females). The respondents were selected by random and purposive sampling methods. Data was collected through questionnaires and interviews. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistical method, percentage, and table. A total of 25 medicinal plants are used for the treatment of different livestock ailments. They are distributed across 17 families. Family, Solanaceae (29.4%) was the most important medicinal plant used for the ethnoveterinary purpose.  Most medicinal plants around the study area are herbs (56%). The most frequently utilized plant parts were leaf (42%). With regard to the mode of preparation Fresh-part (37.5%) was the leading and route of administration is through oral (38.3%). The principal threatening factors for medicinal plants reported were deforestation, habitat destruction, agricultural expansion, and urbanization. The current study showed that Dheeraa town had many medicinal plants that can be used for the treatment of many livestock diseases. The scientific communities have to visit the area and expand the study to commercialize the medicinal plants in this area.

E-mail: [email protected]

8. Full Name:Nardos Alemu

Name of university: Addis Ababa Science and Technology University

Department: Chemical Engineering;  Year of study: 4^th year

 Project work summary:

Pomace pulp utilizes waste agricultural residue materials which is mainly made from banana peel and bagasse. The product is unique because the raw materials are highly fibrous with relatively less complicated and costly processes than wood pulp. The sample is also proven to satisfy high standard paper quality. The cellulose content from our investigated raw materials becomes 85% which gives a good pulp yield and high tensile strength for the producing pulp. With further investigation and tests by increasing the cellulose content to 99%, it can also be used for textile industries. Moreover, this project minimizes environmental pollution by utilizing waste products, prevent deforestation of woods and most importantly have a foreign exchange saving effect by reducing the amount of current imports in Ethiopia. Pomace pulp is expected to be first supplier of pulp for all paper industries in Ethiopia and a high-quality pulp exporter to African countries.

E mail: [email protected]

 

9. Full name: – Zemene Yohannes

Name of university: – University of Gondar

Department: – Biomedical Engineering;  Year: – 2021 G.C

Project work summary: –

Several patients per year get admitted to intensive care unit and these patients are most of the time patient who are unable to breathe by themselves, as a result, they need a ventilation system to keep breathing till there lung recovers. Besides, the need for this machine is drastically increasing because of COVID 19 pandemics. However, mechanical ventilators are very costly as they are not manufactured in Ethiopia. This project aims to design a simple ventilator integrated with vital sign monitoring. In the ventilator part, the Artificial Manual Breathing Unit bag system is automated by using a stepper motor. For vital signs monitoring a sensing module is used for Peripheral oxygen saturation, heart rate measurement, and temperature sensor for body temperature measurement. There is also a user interface unit to set some parameters which are crucial for an artificial breathing system. The breathing parameters are controlled by controlling the motor’s speed, the number of steps, steps in the clockwise and anticlockwise direction, and frequency of direction change per minute by this parameter flow rate, tidal volume, inspiration to expiration ratio, and breath per minute can be set respectively. According to the methodology the electrical simulation is implemented in proteus and the physical prototype. In the prototype the stepper moves in a clockwise and anticlockwise direction according to the set parameters then it squeezes and releases the AMBU bag respectively. The clockwise direction is considered as the inhalation process and the anticlockwise rotation is considered as the exhalation process. When the value of Peripheral oxygen saturation is less than the normal range, the inhalation and exhalation processes which is the clockwise and anticlockwise movement of the motor starts. In another way, the emergency push button is on the system bypass the SpO₂comparing part and starts the breathing system directly. Finally, we get results that fulfill our methodology.

Email: – [email protected]

10. Full name -   Nardos Tibebe

             Addis Ababa university

             5^th year Electrical engineering student

             Biography pending