Future scientist from St Johns College represents South Africa in the USA
Milo Shan award-winning project solves the water constraints South Africa is facing.
Milo Shan (UVI Runge) from St John’s Sixth Form is extremely pleased with his award-winning research project, ( SMARter ) Soil Moisture Artificially Intelligent Regression, which was implemented in a household garden environment to conserve water last year and received several awards at the Eskom Expo for Young Scientists.
Milo received a gold medal, the Top Senior Scientist Award, the Best Project in the Computer Sciences and Software Development category, the SAICE Water Engineering Division Award, and the Eskom Best Innovation Project. From May 14 to 19, he was in Dallas, Texas, to present SMARter at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).
SMARter started from his curiosity regarding the sprinkler systems that were activated at irrational times in his neighbourhood. With the unfortunate reality of water constraints in South Africa, Milo decided to examine which learning machine model might create the most accurate high-resolution soil moisture prototype. The goal was to create an intelligent sprinkler system that would reduce water wastage while maintaining plant health and quality.
“I collected and compiled a multimodal dataset of my garden’s environmental parameters and used it to train several machine-learning algorithms.” “I then evaluated the accuracy of soil moisture predictive models generated by these algorithms,” Milo explained. He discovered that the Random Forest algorithm provided a model that was precise enough to be employed in applications such as irrigation systems.
Milo attributes his accomplishments to his grandparents, who introduced him to the worlds of science, technology, and engineering when he was three years old. “My grandparents used to read science articles from encyclopedias every night,” Milo explained.
Other achievements to date include:
- International Young Physicists’ Tournament South Africa team captain.
- Finalist in the Breakthrough Junior Challenge Global.
- Alumni of Yale Young Global Scholars (YYGS), Innovations in Science and Technology (IST) programme.
- Alumni of the 2023 MIT-ISASA workshop on natural and artificial intelligence.
- Global Finalist Conrad Challenge 2021-2022. Milo entered as one of the top five teams in the Energy and Environment category out of 950 teams globally.
- Gold Award and $20 000 scholarship in the Genius Olympiad 2021 creative writing category (organised by TERRA Science and Education) with over 2400 entries globally.
- Honourable mention (top 1%) and $250 prize in Bowseat Ocean Awareness Contest visual art category, with over 6000 entries globally.
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