Oak Bay is home to one of the brightest young scientists in Canada.
Just over two weeks ago, 13-year-old St. Michaels University student Isaiah Pereira flew over 5,000 kilometres to Fredericton, N.B., where he competed against hundreds of kids and teens at the Canada-Wide Science Fair.
The event, which takes place annually in cities across the country, welcomed 390 students this year – all there to showcase science projects they’ve worked on for months.
Pereira’s creation was one of 338 on display, with each rated by the event’s team of judges during the first week of June.
What stood out about the young scientist's project was that it offered real-world solutions to a problem many grapple with on a nightly basis: poor sleep.
The student engineered a device called the Smart Sleeper to monitor users’ sleep quality in relation to six factors.
"It tells you the temperature, humidity, blue light, ambient light, ambient sound and the air quality of your bedroom, and then tells you how to optimize it for optimal sleep quality,” he said.
Pereira, who boasts a keen interest in human health, created the device to get more shut-eye himself.
“I noticed that I wasn't getting a good sleep due to feeling hot and having allergies," he said. “I wanted to create something that could help improve my sleep and also focus on the environmental aspects.”
To craft the tool, Pereira leveraged his coding experience and engineering know-how. Using Arduino – a software program and small circuit board common among hobbyists – he connected four sensors to a small display, and in just two months managed to piece together the device.
After testing it for a week, the St. Mikes student figured out that the lack of humidity in his bedroom was interfering with his sleep – an issue he quickly remedied.
Though his device worked, Pereira's hard work was far from being over. To snag a spot at the national fair, he first had to display his project at the Vancouver Island Regional Science Fair in early April. He did just that, and two months later, he found himself showing his project again at a different university.
“It was really fun," he said, describing the Canada-Wide Science Fair. “We got to stay in the university dorms, which was really cool, and we had a tour day where we got to go around New Brunswick. Probably the coolest part was all the cool people that I met."
In a large banquet hall at the end of the week-long event, Pereira learned how much the judges liked his device. To his surprise, he had snagged the top spot among scientists in his age category.
“I was kind of in shock,” he said. “Everyone was so excited ... from my region, from Vancouver Island.”
Back in B.C. now, the young scientist hopes to continue work on his Smart Sleeper to find a way to connect it to smart home systems.
“It could use Wi-Fi to interact with it and tell it to turn on the A/C if it's too hot, for example,” he said.
As for his future, Pereira sees a career in engineering or computer science, though he isn’t sure what in the fields he would like to focus on. But with five years of school left, he has plenty of time to figure that out.
