UAE student invents sodium tracker to help athletes stay hydrated, wins 6 awards

A first-year medical student at the UAE University has completed five innovative projects and won numerous awards both inside and outside the country.

One of Mezna Younes Almansouri's projects, which is a solar-powered device that tracks sodium levels in the sweat of athletes, bagged six awards of appreciation. The invention won the third place in the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups Innovation Competition 2020, the gold medal for the global competition for virtual invention in Malaysia and the Young Scientist Award in the technology category organised by the UAE Ministry of Education.

"It provides information on the amount of water that the player should consume,” said Almansouri, a student at the College of Medicine and Health Science.

She said her passion for research and innovation comes from the encouragement she has received from family and teachers, as well as the support extended by her university, which has provided her with research materials and cooperated with authorities to adopt these projects.

“This constitutes a qualitative addition to creativity and innovation projects sponsored by our government in various fields. It enhances research, knowledge, and future foresight, which the UAE can look forward to in the next 50 years,” she said.

The projects are a result of joint ideas in collaboration with other students, Almansouri said. Another one of her projects, a drug detector, won first place in the the Think Science competition. It was completed in cooperation with the Dubai National School, with the participation of her peer Reem Suleiman from the College of Engineering.

"Work is currently underway to create a new device that detects epileptic seizures before they occur, in partnership with my colleague, Reem," Almansouri said.

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