ThinkScience Special Award Winner Bags Internship at General Motors

General Motors partnered with the Emirate’s Foundation’s ThinkScience festival as part of its drive to inspire interest among students for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). The company instituted a Special Award in a contest to recognize, display and reward enthusiastic STEM students drawn from high schools and universities across the seven emirates of the UAE.

The prize awarded to the winner of the contest was an internship at the General Motors Middle East office. The winner would get a chance to collaborate closely with the GM team on a project related to their STEM concept.
Commenting on the award, Gary D. West, Managing Director of Future Mobility said that General Motors works hard to foster a culture of constant innovation. The company believes that innovation is driven by those who ask questions and bring new solutions to the table. For this reason, forums like the ThinkScience festival play an important role in moving STEM related industries forward.

He added, “We are in the midst of a transportation revolution, completely transforming how our customers move from point A to point B – by supporting and expanding STEM education among the youth we are helping better equip the technical experts of tomorrow that will lead the future of mobility.”

The winner, Ibrahim Taqi, a mechanical engineer student at Dubai’s Men’s College was selected by Daniel Oden, Regional Quality Manager. His team’s project, ‘Keeping Children Safe’ comprised a smart system that is self-activated when children were left in cars with closed windows, a situation that could prove to be fatal, especially in regions with hot climates like the Middle East. The main risk associated with this scenario is decreased oxygen. Taqi’s system tackled this risk by automatically rolling the windows down to allow a certain amount of oxygen into the car, ultimately keeping the children safely breathing until the driver returned.
Commenting on the internship, Taqi said: “When I learned I got the internship, I felt really lucky. Now that I’m with the Quality team, I can already tell I’ll be able to learn so much and that this internship will have an impact on my career and future.”

The team from General Motors team was so impressed by the work Taqi’s team did that it offered a second internship to Taqi’s teammate, Hussain Ghadhoob Salem Moosa. Moosa will join the Future Mobility team at GM Middle East on July 1st.

Daniel Oden commented: “Evaluating projects in the Transportation and Road Safety Systems category at the ThinkScience competition was exciting. The competition was very close, and it was inspiring being around such ambitious STEM students with so many promising projects and ideas from across the UAE.”

He added that Ibrahim Taqi and his team truly stood out for the design, methodology, execution, creativity and overall presentation of their project. Safety is a key priority at General Motors, and Ibrahim’s project used innovation to help save more lives. He went on to welcome Ibrahim into the General Motors Quality Team for his internship.