Ward Melville High School’s Team Polaris – made up of students Elyas Masrour, Christopher Moore, Rohan Nagavardhan and Abdullah Nauman – won the “Best Health Hack” in the annual hackathon event at Stony Brook University. 

At this intensive, 24-hour event, the students developed a smart accessory to enable safer navigation for the visually impaired. The product is a smart speaker that can be clipped onto a cane, an everyday necessity for the blind. This speaker uses a single button and voice commands to bring the conveniences of GPS to the blind. The students’ booth was one of two visited by Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone upon recommendation of the tournament organizers. 

“Being the only high school students participating at the event and having been selected out of over 200 college students, we are incredibly proud to have represented Ward Melville High School,” Nauman said. “We feel that this achievement is a testament to the math and computer science programs at Ward Melville. [Taking] Multivariable Calculus last year provided us with the background of knowledge to build machine learning and navigation systems at a collegiate level.”