Meet 13-year-old Lalita Prasida Sripada Srisai, a class IX student from Delhi Public School Damanjodi in Koraput district in Odisha won the ‘Community Impact Award’ at the prestigious Google Science Fair in California on Tuesday. She developed a low-cost bio-absorbent based water purifier which uses waste corn cobs as key ingredient. She won $10,000 as prize money sponsored by Scientific American. She has won the award in 13-15 years age group. Her project will receive support from Google for one year.

About her project “Low Cost Bio- Adsorbent”:

Her project, ‘Low Cost Bio- Adsorbent’ aims to clean waste water by flowing through different layers of Corn cobs which is a cost-effective and simple technique of cleaning water.

Corn cobs could clean water up to 70 to 80 % because they are suitable adsorbents and have high mechanical strength, rigidity and porosity.

The water purifier developed by Lalita would be a great help for the poor living in rural areas of south Odisha, who still do not have any access to pure water. A moment of pride for India..!!!