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Bloomington South high schoolers win $100K national STEM award

By Myah Garza

Posted May 7, 2025

Students Emily Wang and Danielle Yang, and Bloomington South mentor and science educator Kirsten Milks

(Devan Ridgway/WTIU News)

A team of seven girls from Bloomington High School South won a $100,000 national STEM award for their invention to protect hearing aids during sports.

The students — Audrey Adams, Danielle Yang, Emily Wang, Isha Harbaugh, Koel Harbaugh, Nikki Beshkar, and Sara Carmona — were named one of three national winners in Samsung’s “Solve for Tomorrow” competition, which drew entries from over 10,000 public schools.

Their invention, “Storm Shield,” is a lightweight, eco-friendly headband that uses hydrophobic mesh and motion sensors to protect hearing aids from water, wind and impact.

Emily Wang says the idea started with teammate Danielle Yang, who is hard of hearing and struggled to keep her devices safe while playing sports.

“She realized that her hearing aids were often damaged by contact, weather and sweat,” Wang said. “We wanted to create a project that allowed her to have safer play—and help others in our community like her.”

The team also earned the Rising Entrepreneurship Award, which comes with $25,000 to support product development.

Beshkar said the team’s success should encourage girls in STEM.

“A lot of girls think they should be overqualified for something,” Beshkar said. “But you don’t have to know everything—you just need the passion to try.”

Bloomington South mentor and science educator Kirsten Milks said programs like this are helping students think beyond the classroom.

“I think we underestimate young people and their potential for innovation and their potential to tackle really world changing issues,” Milks said. “It's really important to give people opportunities to start small and to start where they live on solving some of these huge challenges."

The team plans to pursue a patent for Storm Shield’s design while continuing to develop a companion app to make it user-friendly and compatible with iOS devices.