JOHOR BARU: Although S. Gomathy teaches in a rural Tamil school, her innovations has earned her more than 200 accolades both locally and internationally.
To date, the 51-year-old science teacher with over 27 years of teaching experience has come up with some 60 different inventions.
She has been featured in international magazines and newsletters and has even travelled abroad to receive prizes for her creations.
Her keen passion as an inventor started when her students, during a field trip to an Orang Asli village in Kota Tinggi in 2008, asked her what they could invent to help the locals there get clean water from a nearby river.
“I wanted to be a role model for them and that paved the way for my first invention, which was an aqua bicycle and aqua water filter system to clean the dirty water,” she said, adding that her inventions were practical problem solving items.
The mother of two daughters, who is from SJK (T) Kangkar Pulai, said since being a science teacher for 16 years, she has instilled the love of science in more than 1,000 students.
“Now my hope is to become a lecturer at the teachers training college to help train more science teachers. A good science teacher will be able to teach 1,000 students and nurture innovation and creativity in them.
“Also at the teachers training college, the reach for the development of science and innovation will be greater,” said Gomathy, who has completed her Master’s degree and is finalising her PhD in Education.
Among her top inventions include hair oil using herbs to help promote hair growth, herbal soap, herbal serum, a water purifying system using a modified bicycle as well as using soiled diapers to grow plants. She has also come up with organic fertiliser, organic pesticides, bio herbal candles, home-made roselle soap and bio gong coffee and soap.
Gomathy decided to come up with her own hair tonic in 2018 after she started losing a lot of hair due to an illness at the time.
“I am now trying to educate my children on the dangers of plastic and how to totally remove it from our daily use,” she said.
Gomathy said to motivate her students, sometimes she too takes part in the professional category in science competitions with her students in the school category.
“Once the school clinched both gold and silver in a science competition several years ago,” she said.
She said that as a lot of her inventions use natural herbs, they even built a green house via donations within the school compound last year to encourage the students to grow them.
Asked about her international awards, she said that she had won in many countries and region including in Canada, Iran, India, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Hong Kong.
“I won the international women achievers award in Sri Lanka in April,” she said, adding that she always had a passion to help the poor as she too was born to a poor family with eight siblings.
Besides crediting her family and supportive husband for her success, Gomathy also thanked her school headmaster S. Mayachandran and the parent-teacher association along with fellow teachers and students for their support.
Asked about funding for her projects, she said most of them were self-funded.
“A lot of my money is spent to send my inventions for laboratory testing.
“When taking part in international competitions, we need to pay for the registration fees, which is always in US currency,” she said, adding that she was grateful for assistance from well-wishes and donors.
Gomathy also said she was not an entrepreneur as all her products were not for commercial purposes.
