In February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, 17-year-old Igor Klymenko was forced to flee his home in Kyiv. He and his family moved to the countryside, sheltering in a basement as the war raged around them.
“I was living with eight people,” Klymenko says. “All this time we heard explosions, rockets, planes, and it was really hard to concentrate, to just focus, [and] not to think about the war.”
After three weeks, and with a renewed sense of urgency, the young engineer decided to revisit a past passion project: a prototype of a drone that could detect unexploded land mines and send their exact coordinates remotely to a user...
...While finishing his senior year and sheltering from the attacks, Klymenko worked with scientists and programmers to hone his Quadcopter Mines Detector. He now has two working prototypes of the device and two Ukrainian patents. Just this week, at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, Klymenko was awarded the Chegg.org Global Student Prize, a $100,000 award for a student making an impact on society, learning and the lives of their peers.