Yusuf Bin Omar Hijazi, a 10-year-old Saudi student, who designed a back-mounted tree-cutter that offers a dominant ground grappling position, was named the 1st prize winner of the Sony Creative Scientific Award for 2009 (SCSA). Prince Mohammed Bin Khalid Al-Abdullah Al-Faisal, President of the Al-Faisaliah Group (AFG), presented the award to Hijazi and two other winners at a ceremony held at the sprawling King Fahd Cultural Center in Riyadh Tuesday under the patronage of the Ministry of Education. Prince Bandar Bin Turki Bin Abdullah Al-Saud, President, Directorate of Education and Culture, members of the Saudi Armed Forces, officials of the Education Ministry, Osamu Muira, Managing Director of Sony Gulf, and a large number of schoolchildren, parents, teachers and businessmen were present at the glittering awards ceremony. Hijazi is a student of Omar Bin Wahab Middle School in Riyadh. The SCSA second prize of SR7,000 went to Abdallah Saggaabi of the same school for developing an alarm system while Sami Al-Shahri, a student of Al-Bazaar School received the third prize of SR5,000 for creating a smart magnetic card. SCSA was initiated in 2005 by the Modern Electronic Company, a subsidiary of Al-Faisaliah Group and exclusive dealers of Sony products in the Kingdom, in collaboration with Sony Gulf and the Ministry of Education and later expanded in cooperation with the Directorate of Education and Culture, the Saudi Armed Forces. The SCSA awards project involved the participation of 1,240 schoolchildren from various schools in the Kingdom. It was a difficult task for the panel of judges to select the winners from highly sophisticated projects submitted for the award. The SCSA award in the ideal schools category went to the Omar Bin Wahab School, as two of the winning students were from that school. Speaking on the occasion, Prince Mohammed said there was a need to recognize the talent and creativity of Saudi students in the Kingdom. “What we are doing is just a drop in the ocean,” he said referring to the SCSA awards and called on others to take initiatives to encourage and recognize the talent of young Saudi students. “Today, as we announce winners of the SCSA 2009 awards, I would like to emphasize that our main objective is not the prize itself, but to ignite the spark of scientific curiosity and creativity in the minds of our young students, who form over 75 percent of the Saudi population,” he said.
