Bayer to sponsor top environmental projects, announced BYEE'10 winners

The Bayer Group in India recently announced the winners of the Bayer Young Environmental Envoy 2010 (BYEE 2010) competition from participants across the country. As a research-based enterprise, Bayer places great emphasis on promoting science education for young people and has therefore been committed to encouraging youth environmental programs for many years. In cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Bayer organizes and promotes à number of specific projects which aim to improve knowledge about the environment among young people and support them in their environmental commitment. One of these projects is the "Bayer Young Environmental Envoy Program".

Originally initiated in 1998 as a local project in Thailand, the concept was subsequently extended to Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Venezuela and Vietnam. In 2010, Argentina joins the program for the first time. This year, one of the main objectives is to support and encourage young students who are actively involved in hands-on environmental projects.

The environmental champions from India ' Vaibhav Tidke and Aswin Chandrasekharan, along with 48 winners from 17 other countries will travel to Germany from November 7 ' 12, 2010 on a week-long all-expenses-paid study tour sponsored by Bayer. On this field trip, the students will get a first-hand experience of how sustainable environmental practices are pursued jointly by the people, government and industy. The excursion entails visits to various waste management and recycling sites as well as workshops on nature monitoring and conservation.

The main criterion for judging the Bayer Young Environmental Envoy 2010 Program was active participation of the student in conducting a hands-on environmental project. Short-listed students were then interviewed to gauge their knowledge and communication skills. The two selected candidates from India have an exemplary academic record and have worked in their areas towards environmental protection.

Vaibhav is a second year Master's student at Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) in Mumbai. He has a keen interest in studying the benefits of renewable energy and its applications for creating sustainable social enterprises. He has been working on the concept and implementation of solar drying and processing of agro and marine products in Indian villages for the last three years under the guidance of Professor B. N. Thorat (Prof of Chemical Engineering) at ICT. His project has won many accolades. It was selected among the Top 10 Sustainable Engineering Innovations by UNESCO from 892 teams across 89 countries. Vaibhav himself has been presented with the Students Achievement award by the National University of Singapore in 2009. He has also been an active participant at the Asian Youth Energy Summit in 2008 and 2009 held in Singapore for the past two consecutive years. Vaibhav is also partly responsible for the founding of an NGO called "Science for Society' which comprises of interdisciplinary students from across the country working towards the development of sustainable technologies.

On the other hand, Aswin is currently pursuing his Masters in Software Engineering at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) with numerous certificates to his merit in the domain of IT and computors ranging from programming to web-designing. He is a fanatic robotics enthusiast and his hobbies include micro-controller programming and swimming. Additonally, he is involved in a myriad of activites as part of the IEEE Student Chapter, Toastmaster International Group and various other associations. From a very young age, he has been extremely passionate about the environment. He started his journey with "The Volvo Adventure Program' in the year 2006, at the age of 15, winning awards for his environmental projects. He then moved on to being selected amongst the top three teams from across the world at the Global Challenge Award 2008. He was awarded a cash prize and given a scholarship at the University of Vermont ' Governor's Institute of Vermont in the US which he accepted and underwent a 2 week intensive robot programming session. For the last 3 years now, he has been a mentor for The Global Challenge teams, helping students all over the world come up with innovative solutions to address the global climate change issue. With a total of 8 award winning projects to his name, he has had the satisfaction of being able to foster hundreds of peers to come up with solutions for a better living. His current project on dye sensitized solar cells, which got him to the top of the BYEE list in India, is a new technology that focuses on tapping solar power to charge daily use appliances such as mobiles and music players.

As an inventor company, Bayer sets trends in research intensive areas and places great emphasis on promoting science education and youth environmental programs. As a step forward this year, in order to make the BYEE program more sustainable and interesting, an additional award has been introduced globally. Prior to the main field trip to Germany, envoys are invited to submit their project details along with suggestions on what would be most helpful to make it even more successful. In the end, three "best-practice' BYEE projects will be selected based on key criteria such as sustainability of the project, inventiveness and project management. These projects will then be offered support from Bayer in the form of materials or technological expertise.