Hello! My name is Ryan Honary, I am 13 years old, and I live in Newport Beach, California. I go to The Pegasus School in Huntington Beach, and I love tennis and the environment.
I care about the environment because it breaks my heart when I hear that plants and animals are being killed and brought close to extinction. I really want to help them and allow them to thrive and grow exponentially. I am most passionate about solving environmental disasters that start from a small location and then grow to become very large.
One project prior to my wildfire detection system which I am proud of is a project in my fifth-grade science class where we had to create a mix between two animals and then write about it. I had combined a tiger and a cheetah which I called a “cheeger.” I then looked at the statistics of the two animals and added a little bit of one animal with a little bit from the other.
My wildfire project started from a fifth-grade science project where we were asked to create anything. I decided to create a small fire detector on a breadboard. From there, I took away the breadboard and created an entire system with flame, heat, and smoke detectors as well as mini-meteorological stations which contained AI to predict where the fire would grow.
My project placed second at the Orange County Science and Engineering Fair and won the Ignite Innovation Challenge. I talked to KCAL about my project back then - you can watch the interview below.
I earned an award from the Office of Naval Research and was encouraged to look for research grants on their website. Someone with the ONR suggested I look for research grants on its website. I also reached the top 30 in Broadcom Masters out of 3,500 people, which put me in the top 10 percent
My project led me to establish a company called SensoRy AI. We then submitted our project for a Small Business Innovation Research Grant. Out of 130 proposals, nine were granted $150,000 for phase one and our business was among them. For phase two, they chose four businesses to be granted $1.6 million and again, mine was one of them.
After phase two, Retired Rear Admiral Mark Heinrich joined our company to assist us with our research for ONR. Now, our business contains two parts: one is an environmental piece,
and the other is an Office of Naval Research area. Both segments are ultimately working to develop next-gen technology that uses artificial intelligence to predict disasters or detect them early on and provide officials with the data they need to mitigate the damages.
I’m constantly looking at new ways I can make a difference when it comes to our planet.
When I grow up, I hope to become an entrepreneur that solves problems associated with environmental disasters. I believe that other people, especially my generation, should also care about the environment because we are the ones who will be affected most by these problems once we grow up. If we don’t do anything about them, then they are only going to get worse and worse.
To people who think they can’t make a difference just because they are one person, they can. This can be in a variety of scenarios too! They might create a revolutionary idea that can allow us to live on Mars, they might be the creator of a major company that helps endangered species by placing them in the most realistic protection centers, or they might even come up with a way to multiply the population of each species, completely terminating the idea of extinction!
It may also be as simple as taking small steps to reduce your individual impact on our planet, like reducing your use of single-use plastics.