Siti Hurrairah (second from left) with the members of the Girl Code team from SMK Lutong in Miri.
THREE students from SMK Lutong, Miri, made their state of Sarawak proud when their team Girl Code was named national champions of Shell NXplorers Malaysia 2023, after competing with five other teams from schools across the country.
Shell NXplorers is Shell’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) competition that challenges school students to work in teams to design and develop solutions to real-world problems within the nexus of food-water-energy.
Girl Code, which comprises Nirelly Efua Nigel, Violete Sim and Ashley Saran Francis, came up with an invention called Compost Manager. This is an e-composting system designed to meticulously monitor both the conditions and progress of compost heaps.
With the integration of a user-friendly app, Compost-Mate, it simplifies the monitoring process, making it accessible to composting enthusiasts of all levels.
By providing real-time data on essential factors such as temperature, humidity and aeration, it ensures that the composting process remains optimised for efficiency and effectiveness.
Winner of the Best Presenter award, Nichelle, (right) a member of team XO_Leiune from SM All Saints, Sabah, with Siti Hurrairah.
Shell Malaysia country chair and Upstream Malaysia senior vice-president Siti Hurrairah Sulaiman said: “It’s really inspiring to see the students in our Shell NXplorers programme facing obstacles with resilience and collaborating to overcome them, in their pursuit to leverage innovation in designing solutions that will potentially address the major global challenges the world faces.”
Thanking Shell for the opportunity, the members of Girl Code said: “The valuable lessons learnt in this programme have empowered us to look beyond the usual, and delve deeper into real-life problems to come up with solutions, which we hope will bring a positive impact to our communities.”
A special prize for the Best Presenter was awarded to Nichelle Essabelle James, a member of team XO_Leiune from SM All Saints in Sabah, for her eloquence and detailed explanation on her team’s invention.
Six schools – two finalists each from peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak, participated in the national finals after emerging state winners and runners up at the state level of the competition.
The finalist schools were SMK Pekan Telipok and SM All Saints from Sabah; SMK Bintulu and SMK Lutong from Sarawak, and SMK Bandar Puncak Jalil and SMK Aminuddin Baki from peninsular Malaysia.
The panel of jury for the grand finals comprised Upstream Malaysia projects general manager Norizah Othman, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) digital enabler division regulatory facilitation director Tengku Azrul Tengku Azhar, and Education Ministry corporate social responsibility and promotion unit, sports, co-curricular and arts division principal assistant director Ida Hairani Bakar.
With the support of Education Ministry, Shell NXplorers Malaysia worked with over 1,000 secondary school students from 25 schools across Malaysia.
These students were given the opportunity to gain hands-on STEM learning, with a focus on technology.
