The Scientific American Innovator Award
Google announced the 2019 Science Fair results on 29 July. Against the Scientific American Innovator Award it lists Tuan Dolmen of Turkey, who “devised a technique to harvest energy from tree vibrations”.
The award is one of four special prizes given by the fair's partners, each judged by a representative of the partner organisation. In 2019 the judging panel included people from LEGO Education, Scientific American, Virgin Galactic and National Geographic, with Mariette DiChristina, then editor in chief of Scientific American, serving as chief judge.
What the project set out to do
The premise is simple to state and difficult to execute. Ambient movement is everywhere and almost never captured, because the energy in any single oscillation is tiny and the equipment needed to collect it usually costs more energy to make than it will ever return.
Google's announcement does not describe the mechanism Dolmen used, the materials involved, how much power the system produced, or where it was tested. What the record establishes is the aim of the work and the fact that a panel drawn from a science magazine's editorial staff judged it the most innovative entry in the field that year.
The 2019 field
The fair drew thousands of student entries and narrowed them to 24 finalist teams representing 14 countries. The grand prize went to Fionn Ferreira of Ireland, for a method of removing microplastics from wastewater, which DiChristina praised for “tenacity and dedication to solving an important environmental problem”.
The other special awards went to Celestine Wenardy of Indonesia, who took the Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award for an affordable, non-invasive blood sugar test; Aman KA and AU Nachiketh of India, who took the National Geographic Explorer Award for an environmentally safe rubber coagulation process using fruit; and Daniel Kazantsev of Russia, who took the LEGO Education Builder Award for a communication aid for deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
Turkey at the fair
Fourteen countries were represented among the finalist teams in 2019, and Turkey's entry left with one of the five headline awards. The announcement does not name Dolmen's school, city or age, and gives no quotation from him.
Nor does it disclose the value of the prizes. Google's earlier fairs published scholarship amounts; the 2019 announcement as read here does not, so the material reward attached to the Innovator Award is not part of the documented record.
What is documented — and what is not
The firm facts come from the organiser: the Scientific American Innovator Award at the 2019 Google Science Fair, the subject of the project, the country, the date of the announcement, and the scale and composition of the field. A result stated by the competition that awarded it is as solid as this kind of record gets.
The rest is absent. No age, date of birth, school or home town appears in the source, no photograph, no interview, no technical detail and no measurement of the system's output. There is also no follow-up reporting, so nothing in these sources establishes whether the work continued after July 2019.
| Person | Country | Milestone | Age / Stat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rishi Shiv Prasanna | India | Winning the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar in 2023 at eight, for… | Age 0 |
| Cannan Huey-You | United States | Presenting research on a Milky Way gas cloud at the American Astronomical… | Age 11 |
| Ángela Olazarán Laureano | Mexico | An AI medical assistant built in Veracruz, designed to work where there is | Age 14 |
| Émer Hickey | Ireland | Co-winning the 2014 Google Science Fair grand prize | Age 16 |
| Tuan Dolmen | Turkey | Scientific American Innovator Award, Google Science Fair 2019 | — |
What is documented — and what is not
✓ Documented
- Scientific American Innovator Award at the 2019 Google Science Fair (Google)
- Project described as harvesting energy from tree vibrations
- 24 finalist teams from 14 countries; grand prize to Fionn Ferreira of Ireland
? Unverified, disputed or wrong
- No technical description, materials or power output published for the project
- No age, school, city, photograph or quotation in the source
- No prize amount disclosed, and no follow-up reporting after July 2019
Questions people ask about Tuan Dolmen
What did Tuan Dolmen win?
The Scientific American Innovator Award at the 2019 Google Science Fair, for a technique to harvest energy from tree vibrations.
How does the technique work?
Google's announcement does not describe the mechanism, the materials or the power output, and no other source in this record does.
How old is Tuan Dolmen?
No source in this record gives his age or date of birth.
Who won the grand prize in 2019?
Fionn Ferreira of Ireland, for a method of removing microplastics from wastewater.
How big was the field?
Twenty-four finalist teams representing fourteen countries, selected from thousands of entries.
Is Tuan Dolmen on Wikipedia?
No Wikipedia article was found for him. Google's own winners announcement is the primary published record.
How much was the prize worth?
The 2019 announcement as read here does not disclose prize amounts for the special awards.
Where is Tuan Dolmen now?
No source in this record says. The published trail ends with the July 2019 announcement.
Quick quiz: how well do you know Dolmen’s story?
What did Tuan Dolmen's project harvest energy from?
Which award did he win?
How many countries were represented among the 2019 finalists?
Sources
- Students changing the world — this year's Science Fair winners — Google (The Keyword), 2019-07-29
Checked by the Geniuses.club editorial team. Ages are given as of September 2026.
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