ASIA Pacific University of Technology and Innovation Product Design student Bennie Beh Hue May, who is part of the team who won the James Dyson Award 2021 with their sustainable seawater desalination pod, has been chosen as the STEM Icon for Malaysia Techlympics 2022.
Her team's creation - a WaterPod to resolve water problems faced by sea nomads like Sabah's Bajau Laut community.
The final year student School of Media, Arts and Design (Somad) said she was exposed to art and design from a young age.
"My mother, an interior designer, was a strong influence in shaping my interest in art and design, said Beh.
Besides art, her interest in STEM started when she was in secondary school.
"I was a science major student plus I was actively involved in robotics as well. From there, I joined the Robotics Club at school and won in the National Robotics Competition. Mainly because I enjoyed hands-on work like the process of assembling a product, I think that is the passion that kept me going even though there were some challenges faced from time to time," she said.
"Our WaterPod design concept won the national level in James Dyson Award 2021 and gave us a chance to be a STEM Icon for Malaysia Techlympics 2022," she said.
Beh also had the opportunity to share her idea to the attendees in Techlympics launch recently.
"It was exciting as we received a lot of interest coming from the floor as well including the government agencies and private sector," said Beh.
The WaterPod project
As fresh and clean water is depleting and becoming a scarce resource, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals has identified water as one of the areas that needs an urgent attention.
"Hence, we decided to develop a water desalination pod for the sea nomads community because they are struggling with access to clean water. With clean water, they can better hydrate, prepare food, and experience better sanitation, which altogether improves their quality of living and lifespan," explained Beh.
Challenges
As the project was done during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, putting everything together was quite a challenge as the team was working remotely.
"Now that classes have resumed at university, we are looking to complete the initial prototype testing by the end of 2022," she said.
Although the university has funded the students' project, they hope to secure more interest from investors and partners going forward because there's still a lot of redesign, testing and validation that needs to be done along the commercialisation as we look to bring this product out to market - depending on prospective buyers.
Product design field
For Beh, product design is an interesting field which combines both creative (design) and scientific (technology) knowledge.
"It also allows me to juggle between both my passions and helps to widen my skills by observing how these elements make a better environment for us to live, work and play," she said.
"As I am always curious about many things in life, I get exposed to different types of projects including in electronics, electrical, furniture, user experience, user interface and even automotive," she added.
The final year student is highly interested in sustainable design that can help drive social change and improve the environment.
"The world now is filled with single-use products which go straight into the landfill. So, my hope is to try to improve this scenario and try to reduce the product that we design so that it does not end up in the landfill - or takes a longer time to get there after multiple use. Other than that, I have an ultimate goal to create my own branding one day in the future," she said.
Exploring STEM
Beh has one advice to students who want to prusue STEM studies.
"Always be open to try something new especially STEM because it is fun. There are many options available to us today thanks to a blended and multidisciplinary approach in STEM," she said.
Beh gave an example of product design to show the opportinities in the area.
"It is a good field to venture into as we get to work with designers and engineers. There are so many cool products in the world today - just think about the iPhone, bladeless fan, or even a kitchen spiraliser - all of these consumer goods require design sophistication which are all ergonomically designed and environmentally friendly. Thus, the opportunity in this area of work can be pretty vast," she said.
Malaysia Techlympics
The Malaysia Techlympics is an important initiative driven by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, as part of enculturating STEM amongst Malaysians. MOSTI is activating an informal, intentional and inclusive approach to what is the largest nationwide STEM initiative – filled with competitions, talks, and other exciting programmes – in order to build the talent pipeline that is workforce ready.