The SHAD Carleton team, Kameleon, recently won an unprecedented five out of seven awards at the annual John Dobson Entrepreneurship Cup on Oct. 26, besting 800 other Canadian high school students.
SHAD is a summer entrepreneurship and enrichment program for high school students, that runs for the duration of July. It allows students to expand their skills in the STEAM fields—science, technology, engineering, arts, and math—while attending lectures, participating in labs and workshops, and testing innovative ideas.
Kameleon’s winning idea consisted of a paint formula applied to roof shingles that turns black during the night to absorb heat, and white during the day to repel and reflect heat outwards, changing colour like its namesake: a chameleon. The invention allows the average house to reduce its total energy output, while maintaining the internal temperature.
Kameleon received awards in the categories: best application of theme, best application of scientific principles, best business plan, best prototype, and best overall team, leading them to be crowned not only the best SHAD team present at the ceremony, but the best team in the history of the program.
Erin Engelhardt, the director of Carleton’s SHAD program and a SHAD alumnus, said she truly believes that the hard work of her team was rewarded fairly, and that the dedication of Carleton’s professors who are involved with the program should be praised as well.
“Kameleon’s solution is elegant, simple, easy to understand. They had a really great idea and they just ran with it. It was truly amazing to see,” she said.
Saad Baig, Kameleon’s spokesperson and a Grade 12 student from the Toronto area, said that his mindset when arriving at the SHAD Cup was just that he was happy to have gotten this opportunity to participate.
“Carleton’s team won one or two awards last year I believe, so we just wanted to match that to uphold Carleton’s reputation. They listed off the first award . . . then the second . . . and then announced the next five awards were all swept by one team, so we didn’t get our hopes up,” Baig said. “[Then] we heard Team Carleton, and we were all shocked for the first few minutes, and we were grateful and honoured for what we experienced.”
Formed in 1980, there are now 16 universities across Canada in 11 provinces that participate in the annual SHAD program. According to Engelhardt, Carleton invites 60 of the top students from across the country to the campus, and allows them to test their intellectual and collaborative skills alongside other like-minded students who are interested in the same fields of study.
Teddy Katz, the vice president (media and communications) for SHAD and a Carleton alumnus, called SHAD one of Canada’s best kept secrets.
“It gives the students specific skills down the road when they want pursue innovations and entrepreneurship, as they start receiving the education they need to make those connections,” Katz said. “We’ve had just over 16,000 SHAD [alumni] fellows, who are usually leaders in their fields.”
Megan Scarlett, Kameleon’s team lead and a Grade 11 student from the Toronto area, talked to The Charlatan about the team’s success, and its record-breaking innovation.
“We were just happy that we won at our campus, and no matter what happened at SHAD Cup, we were proud of our work,” she said.
According to Engelhardt, Kameleon’s journey isn’t limited to sweeping SHAD. She said the team is still in contact, discussing establishing a patent for their product.
