Our School’s Senior STEAM Team was presented the Gold Medal with Jury Congratulations in the environmental protection and recycling category in the 50th Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions held in April 2025, meaning our Senior Team’s project achieved the highest mark in this category among hundreds of international participating teams. Together with our School’s win of our first Gold Award in the Geneva Inventions 2024, we became the only school in the world to win 2 Gold Medals in 2 consecutive years in the 50years of history of the competition. The winning team of 2025 included Naomi Luo (10A), Eloise Qin (10A), Joey Dai (10B), Kobe Kwok (9D) and Katherine Hu (7A).
The gold award-winning project is an innovative design that converts coffee grounds (waste) into high-performance lithium-ion battery anode materials. Our students noticed that a large amount of coffee waste is generated in the coffee consumer industries which occupies landfill resources. Meanwhile, with the rapid development of electric vehicles and renewal energy, the demand for high-performance lithium-ion batteries is increasing, and the mining and processing of traditional battery materials often impose a heavy burden on the environment. To address this issue, the Senior STEAM Team researched into using an innovative carbonization process, treating coffee grounds with zinc chloride at 550oC to obtain carbon materials with excellent electrochemical performance. The resulting material not only improves the battery’s specific capacity and cycle stability but also reduces the battery’s cost and dependence on non-renewable resources, contributing towards the sustainable development of high-performance lithium-ion batteries, promoting the recycling of beverage resources, and driving the development of green energy.
During the exhibition, three visiting investment groups from Saudi Arabia and Thailand expressed strong in our Senior STEAM Team’s project, with willingness to further cooperate with our students to jointly promote the commercial industrialization of this innovation for potential markets. This experience opens up student opportunities of entrepreneurship and international cooperation and exchanges at higher levels.
Our Senior STEAM Team students also had academic exchanges with school teams from Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Thailand and local Swiss students, learning from projects that ranged from eco-friendly packaging solutions to advanced renewable energy technologies. Through these interactions, our students gained new insights and forged friendships with like-minded peers that transcend borders.
Our Junior STEAM team last year won the gold medal for the longest distance flight in the Singapore Amazing Flying Machine Competition in 2024. This year’s Junior Team took part in the Geneva International Paper Aeroplane Competition and among more than 80 participants from different countries, our students won top awards in the two categories of the competition:
Longest Distance
Champion Andy Yue (7C) (20.5 metres)
1st runner-up Felix Deng (7C)
Greatest Precision
Champion Felix Deng (7C) (1st final round: draw; 2nd final round: 100-0)
2rd runner-up Sean Chen (7B)
During this trip, the Junior STEAM Team students fully displayed the Harrow value of fellowship, sharing tips and insights with each other, teaching each other, and at the same time, willing to pass on their skills of folding paper aeroplanes to students and competitors from other countries. In addition, our students acted as tutors in the workshop, but because they were not familiar with French, they faced psychological pressure when facing a huge foreign crowd. Nevertheless, despite the small language barrier, our Junior STEAM Team students made good use of external language resources, physical aids and their own English to help break down the communication barrier, and not only achieve the awards, but also grew personally in the face of adversity.
We warmly congratulate our students’ outstanding achievements in Geneva Inventions 2025! We thank our teachers and tutors for their guidance, and will continue to provide HHKCS students with such opportunities of STEAM research, competition, exchanges and potential real-life applications.
