At only 16 years old, Arush Goswami is no stranger to explaining complex scientific and engineering concepts to adults. This expertise includes the effects of strokes.
“Strokes are very widespread and they can often cause a lot of harm to people’s mobility,” said Goswami, who will be a junior at Wilsonville High School next fall. “I thought it was interesting how, even though the body itself was unable to move, the brain was still trying to tell the body to move, (but) there was no connection. I thought that could be utilized to come up with a solution.”
Goswami took first place in social innovation at the University of Deleware’s Diamond Challenge last April, earning a $12,000 prize for designing Exotech — a brain-controlled exoskeleton to help post-stroke hand rehabilitation.
The Diamond Challenge is a business and entrepreneurship competition hosted by the University of Delaware, that gathers students from around the world to pitch their products that focus on social and business innovation.
Goswami said the idea started as a science project. As he iterated on the initial design and prototype, he decided to submit the project to the International Science and Engineering Fair at school as well as the Diamond Challenge.
“I’ve always enjoyed problem-solving,” said Goswami. “This was the first time I’ve built something, but I guess I’m following in my brother’s footsteps. He was really into these science competitions, and that drove me to do the same.”
Like his brother Anish, Arush attended Three Rivers Charter School from fourth to eighth grade and developed an interest in science and engineering.
To push Exotech to Diamond Challenge-caliber, Goswami partnered with older students from other schools — Jazveer Kaler, Akash Pai and Eleanor Song — and began to develop a pitch.
Only 64 teams who entered the Diamond Challenge earned a place to travel to the University of Delaware to present in person; Exotech was one of them.
“Essentially, you come up with a script,” he said. “The actual summit, the part in Delaware, is the third round of the competition.”
During the first round, students submit only a one minute recording explaining the basics of their product and design. In each subsequent round, the students are given more and more time to dive into the purpose of their designs and the problem they’re attempting to solve.
“I think the trip itself was really fun. I’ll never forget the experience of going on the trip and presenting,” said Goswami. “On the design front, some of the rounds were a month apart from each other, so it gave me time to tweak my design to something that performs better. So between each round of judging, we’d slightly change certain parts of the project.”
Exotech was entered into the social innovation track at Diamond Challenge, which focuses on the social innovation side of entrepreneurship. This track asks the question: What social or societal problem can my innovation help solve?
“We did emphasize the impact — one in six people in their lifetime will suffer a stroke,” said Goswami. “Showing how important this issue is and from there you lead into what your design is doing to fix it.”
Goswami said he may enter the Diamond Challenge again with friends from Wilsonville High School next year but hasn’t decided yet, especially after winning first place his first time participating.
“I was pretty surprised,” he said. “I was in a state of shock, but I spent such a long time working on the project and the pitch, so I felt pretty proud of my work.”
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