Coronado High School sophomore Danielle-Elizabeth Mensah-Baah won two international awards from the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) for her STEM leadership and a wildfire-detection device she designed.
Mensah-Baah received both the SWENext STEM in Action Award and the SWENext Community Award at a ceremony Thursday, Oct. 1, making her one of 25 students honored in each category, the Coronado Eagle & Journal first reported. High school freshmen through juniors from across the country and internationally competed for the honors.
For the Community Award, Mensah-Baah proposed an optical lens system called the DEMB Tracker, short for "destroys emerging man-made blunders." The device would use thermal camera sensors from space to identify wildfires as they ignite and immediately alert authorities and nearby residents. She worked with a nonprofit organization to build a prototype.
The SWE awards page also noted Mensah-Baah completed a second capstone project: a virtual reality world designed to assist people with mental health conditions and disabilities.
Her resume is long. A 3D-printed biodegradable shoe she created won first place in Engineering Materials, Transport, and Energy at the Greater San Diego Science & Engineering Fair. That project also earned awards from General Atomics, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Society of American Military Engineers, according to both the Eagle & Journal and SWE.
"I want to build a solution to a specific problem that has not had a solution created yet," Mensah-Baah told the Eagle & Journal. "That's what motivates me to explore it."
At Coronado High, Mensah-Baah directs the SWENext Club and founded the TEDx Youth, Triple A and Drones clubs. She is also involved with Coronado Robotics and the Coronado School of the Arts. She started building websites at age nine and has served as a code leader, driver and programmer in FIRST Tech Challenge and FIRST Robotics Competition.
Beyond Coronado, she competed in the MIT Zero Gravity Space Challenge and a Jacob's Team Innovation Challenge involving 17 countries. Her team designed an exoskeleton to help people with cerebral palsy, earning a Global Impact nomination.
She also led a STEM workshop for about 100 students in Accra, Ghana, using engineering kits provided by a nonprofit. Mensah-Baah co-hosts "The Science Of," a podcast on Cloudcast Media where she interviews scientists at UC San Diego, and recently launched a companion show, "The Science of You."
Coronado Robotics Academy Director Roberta Lenert praised Mensah-Baah's drive, saying the sophomore has an unstoppable passion for robotics and is opening doors for the next generation of engineers.
Mensah-Baah aspires to become a heart surgeon specializing in robotic surgery. The SWE annual conference, WE26, is scheduled for Nov. 5-7 in Boston.
