Car seat alarm inventors make finals in contest

By Emily Richmond

Wednesday, April 24, 2002 | 9:06 a.m.

Three Hyde Park Middle School students who designed an infant car seat alarm have been named finalists in a National Science Foundation competition and will travel to Disney World to vie for the grand prize.

Kelsey Hand, Athena Pisanello and Rochelle Taylor, all seventh grade students in Hyde Park's math and sciences academy, will head to Disney's Epcot Center in June for a week of educational workshops and field trips. Their teacher and coach, Stephen Lloyd, will also attend.

The girls hope to patent their invention, named the Baby Beeper. The device clips to a keychain, and when a child is placed in the car seat, a weight-sensor pressure pad transmits a signal to the keyring and activates the alarm system. If the keyring gets out of range and the weight is not lifted, the alarm sounds.

More than 2,500 students submitted entries to this year's Making Science Make Sense competition, which asks middle school students to come up with a solution to a problem in their community. Ten teams made it to the finals.

The girls say they chose an infant car alarm last fall after three babies had died and hundreds of others had to be rescued by paramedics after being forgotten by their parents in their cars.

Co-sponsored by the Bayer Corp., the competition is in its sixth year. This is the fifth year Hyde Park has sent a team to the finals, a record Principal James Kuzma credited to the school's comprehensive approach to education.

"We help our students foster creative and critical thinking," Lloyd said. "We're very proud of the girls. They're terrific representatives of what we're trying to do here."