Within the age of Covid, Jordanian mechanical engineer Saliba Taimeh contemplated find out how to take care of one contaminated on a regular basis floor: the handrails of escalators in buying malls and transport hubs.
He got here up with a tool to sterilise them with UV rays — and that is the place TechWorks stepped in.
A wealth of concepts wouldn’t have seen the sunshine of day with out TechWorks, a Jordanian platform geared toward bringing collectively youth, concepts and assets to jump-start improvements.
Arrange in 2018, TechWorks says its mission is “to plug into entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems” and switch concepts into actuality.
It’s outfitted with state-of-the-art expertise akin to 3D printers and affiliated with a basis arrange by Crown Prince Hussein.
Final yr, it attracted about 100 inventors and start-up corporations, enabling them to provide prototypes shortly and at low price.
Taimeh, 39, mentioned TechWorks “offered me with each assist, back-up, recommendation and steering” to assist good the sterilising system, after 23 makes an attempt over nearly two years.
His invention sterilises the handrails of escalators “from every kind of viruses, akin to coronavirus and micro organism,” he mentioned.
After contacting a number of worldwide corporations, a German agency specialising in well being and security in public locations signed as much as manufacture the “Brigid Field”.
Weighing in at 7.2 kilograms (nearly 16 kilos), it may be put in in lower than quarter-hour.
– Success tales –
Taimeh’s success story is just one of many.
Highschool pupil Zain Abu Rumman, 18, has developed a monitoring system for aged sufferers and folks with particular wants, worn like a watch or across the neck.
The “SPS Watch” has a battery that lasts eight days and is immune to water, warmth and breakage.
“The system can ship alerts to the cell phone of a member of the family by means of a particular software in case the individual carrying it falls or is damage, or if he strays from a sure place,” Abu Rumman mentioned.
It took him two-and-a-half years to good and he has struck a manufacturing accord with a Chinese language firm.
Omar Khader, 26, works for “Jazri Studio”, an industrial design firm which has devised a “good” plug to guard youngsters from electrical shocks.
“TechWorks has superior gear, engineers and technicians that assist us convert our concepts into profitable merchandise,” he mentioned.
– FabLab ‘open to all’ –
Different designers, like 32-year-old civil engineer Malik Nour, nonetheless have a protracted and costly solution to go to refine their merchandise.
Nour’s brainchild is the “Pikler Triangle”, designed as a secure and environmentally pleasant youngsters’s toy.
He hopes to draw Swedish furnishings big IKEA to tackle his merchandise, which he’s already promoting over social media to clients in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, underneath the label of “Fares World”, named after his baby.
Ismail Hakki, government director of TechWorks, mentioned its goal is to offer “a inventive atmosphere and all the mandatory assets to assist and allow younger individuals to remodel their initiatives from a mere concept into an actual product”.
The doorways of the challenge’s “Fabrication Lab”, or FabLab, are “open to all; we assist college students, entrepreneurs, and startups”, he mentioned.
FabLab additionally gives companies to medical doctors and hospitals within the fields of facial restoration, digital dentistry, face masks and sterilisation.
On the request of a health care provider, it reworked the chest x-ray of a affected person with a malignant tumour near the guts right into a three-dimensional mannequin of the affected person’s chest making it simpler to function.
FabLab touts many successes, together with a “good dwelling” which permits a cell phone person to manage electrical home equipment inside the home from afar by turning on heating or cooling techniques, and a piano keyboard to assist a blind musician play.
It plans to open two extra branches in Jordan to offer expertise coaching and assist for college and college college students.
