Winners of 7th BRICS Young Innovators Prize Announced

The winners of the 7th BRICS Young Innovators Prize were announced on 28 November at the 4th Young Scientists Congress at Sirius. Russian scientist Dmitry Shadrin took third place with his project for predicting wildfires with artificial intelligence.

The Young Innovators Prize was held as part of the annual BRICS Young Scientists Forum in five categories: green technologies for the chemical industry, green technologies for the food industry, green technologies for the agricultural industry, AI technologies, and the special ‘Palladium and Future Technologies’ category (awarded separately). The top three were selected by an international jury.

Brazilian scientist Thiago Edwiges, a professor at the Federal University of Technology, Parana, won the 7th BRICS Young Innovators Prize for new sugarcane production waste recycling technology. The novelty of the technology lies in the combined processing of solid and liquid waste, which increases the efficiency of the production of a methane and hydrogen mixture that can be used as fuel.

Second place went to Professor Yuan Wu of the University of Science and Technology of China for a project using single-atom zinc oxide as a curing agent in the rubber industry. Wu created a new material in the form of an additive for producing rubber from raw materials, significantly reducing the use of zinc oxide in the production process and contributing to the manufacture of more environmentally friendly tyres among others.

Dmitry Shadrin, a Russian scientist from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, came in third with a project for the creation of a digital wildfire forecasting system. By using AI, it is possible to create a regularly updated geographic grid model capable of predicting wildfires up to 5 days in advance. The model uses data on fires already confirmed, weather forecasts, and the topography, vegetation, and population density of local terrain to reach an accuracy of 85%.

The special category went to a Chinese scientist, Tongji University innovator Xin Cai, who presented a project on new palladium-containing catalysts for hydrogen energy devices, obtaining physical samples of palladium nanopowder. This new catalyst with properties superior to commercial analogues can be used in hydrogen power to make the fuel cell more efficient, hastening the approach of widespread access to hydrogen power.

The next BRICS Young Innovators Prize is scheduled for 2025 at the BRICS Young Scientists Forum in Brazil.

The Roscongress Foundation manages the events of Russia’s BRICS chairship.