Meet the Innovators

As a child, Shubham Banerjee loved LEGO® bricks. However, the ninth-grader from Santa Clara, California, never imagined that his interest in them would help him transform the lives of people with disabilities—but that’s exactly what happened. 

In 2013, Shubham’s family received a flyer in the mail from an organization that helps the visually impaired. “I didn’t really know how blind people read,” he recalls, “so I started Googling.”

Shubham ended up learning about Braille—a system of raised dots that stand for letters, which allows blind people to read with their fingertips. To interpret information from computers, they use specialized printers to print documents in Braille. But these devices can cost more than $2,000 each. 

That shocked Shubham, so for his school science fair, he decided he would attempt to build a more affordable Braille printer. He eventually found a way using a LEGO robotics kit. The best part? His invention, called Braigo, costs just $375 to make.

Shubham admits creating his printer took some trial and error. While most Braille printers print letters as raised dots, his invention uses a pushpin to poke holes in a sheet of paper. Blind people can read by feeling the holes that stand for each letter.

“I had to build and break seven different models and try all kinds of programming sequences before settling on one that was able to print . . . according to Braille standards,” Shubham says.

But his hard work has paid off. In 2014, Shubham formed his own company, Braigo Labs. And, thanks to an investment from Intel, he hopes to start manufacturing a new version of his printer—one that doesn’t use LEGO parts—soon.

In the meantime, Shubham has put instructions for building his original printer online so others can learn how to do it­—for free. “My goal,” he says, “is to help those who need to understand and read Braille more easily be able to do so.”

When Kenneth Shinozuka was a toddler, he and his grandfather were visiting a park in Japan when the older man suddenly got disoriented and lost. “It took an hour for my mom to find us, and it was very frightening,” explains Kenneth, now a high school senior in New York City. 

The incident was the first sign that Kenneth’s grandfather had Alzheimer’s disease, an illness that permanently impairs a person’s memory, thinking, and judgment. People with Alzheimer’s become confused and forget how to do certain things. They often leave their homes and get lost.

A few years ago, Kenneth’s grandfather started wandering. “One morning, a police officer showed up at our door, standing next to my grandfather, who was still in his pajamas,” Kenneth says. “He had been walking by the highway.”

Not knowing what else to do, Kenneth’s family began taking turns keeping watch over his grandfather each night. One evening when Kenneth was on duty, he got an idea as he stopped his grandfather from getting out of bed: What if there were a sensor attached to his foot that would send a signal to a phone every time he got up?

That may sound complicated, but it didn’t stop Kenneth. “I had very little knowledge about sensors or circuitry or coding, so I got to work reading everything I could find,” he explains. “I wanted to tap into every possible resource.” 

Two years later, Kenneth created a prototype for a product he called SafeWander. It’s a sock with a built-in sensor that sends an alert to a caregiver’s mobile device anytime the wearer’s foot contacts the floor. 

Kenneth tested his invention on his grandfather. It worked! Now the whole family has greater peace of mind, knowing that their beloved relative will be safe.

Inspired to provide that same kind of security to other families, Kenneth recently started selling a version of SafeWander online. He says knowing that his grandfather is protected thanks to something he created is rewarding.

“It showed me that technology can really be used to improve people’s lives in very meaningful ways.”

Trisha Prabhu was devastated. It was 2013, and she’d just heard a story about a young girl who’d taken her own life after being cyberbullied. 

“I was heartbroken—I couldn’t believe this sort of thing was happening,” recalls Trisha, now a high school sophomore in Naperville, Illinois. “I started to do more research and realized that teens everywhere suffer from online bullying.”  

As Trisha delved deeper into the crisis, she also learned something important about teens’ brains: The part that’s involved with decision making, called the prefrontal cortex, doesn’t fully develop until approximately age 25. That helps explain why some teens’ good judgment so often goes out the window—with devastating consequences. 

“We don’t always have the brainpower, scientifically speaking, to make good decisions in the heat of the moment,” Trisha notes.

She began wondering: What if I could give kids a chance to think about what they’re doing before they post something damaging online? Could that change their behavior?

And so Trisha, who’s been writing computer code since she was 10, got to work on her idea. She created an app for teens called ReThink. Anytime people are about to post something potentially offensive on social media, the app launches a pop-up alert, asking them if they’re sure they want to post what they’ve written.

When Trisha tested the app at her library and her school, she found that more than 93 percent of users who received the alert changed their minds about posting their messages. 

Now the free ReThink app is being used in libraries and schools across the nation.  

For Trisha, the best part of being an inventor is knowing that she’s helping change other teens’ lives for the better.

“It’s incredible how when teens realize what they’re doing really isn’t worth it, they make the right decision,” she says.