Kaavya Shah

The Sanctum started with a question: what if we could take the smartest ideas from ancient architecture and combine them with modern technology? We studied five structures - Machu Picchu's earthquake-proof stonework, the Ajanta Caves' natural light reflections, Hawa Mahal's 953-window cooling system, solar glass facades, and The Edge in NYC - and designed a building that brings all of those ideas together. The structure uses interlocking CSEB blocks that flex during earthquakes instead of cracking, smooth marble and lime plaster to replace artificial lighting, IoT-controlled louvers for natural ventilation, solar glass for energy generation, and a rainwater harvesting system. The result: 73.5% lower CO2 emissions, 41% savings on air conditioning, and up to 60% less energy used on lighting.

Seaweed can absorb CO2, produce oxygen, replace plastic, and feed people - but farming it is still almost entirely manual. For the World Robot Olympiad 2024, we built an autonomous seaweed farming robot that handles the full lifecycle: checking water conditions using pH, temperature, and salinity sensors, planting seaweed trays in optimal locations, and harvesting them once fully grown. The robot is designed as a double-hulled catamaran that can operate in deep sea and in any weather, removing the two biggest limitations of current seaweed farming. We visited ClimaCrew's seaweed farms in Ratnagiri to understand real-world challenges firsthand, and that field research shaped every design decision. The robot combines Arduino sensors for water testing with Lego mechanisms for planting and harvesting, and communicates via satellite to log all data in real time.

Oceans produce 50% of Earth's oxygen and absorb a quarter of all carbon emissions, but they're filling up with plastic. Ocean Guard is our answer: an autonomous robot ship powered entirely by renewable energy - solar, wind, hydroelectric, and salt water - that cleans the ocean 24/7 without human crew on board. It collects surface trash using a conveyor belt system, segregates and compresses recyclable material using a YOLO v8 imaging system, and filters microplastics and pollutants from the water using activated carbon. It also carries a deep-sea rover for detecting sunken plastic without disturbing marine ecosystems, and a drone for spotting garbage patches from above. The ship is built to survive storms with a double catamaran hull, dynamic positioning, and wave-piercing bows. Our aim: remove 4,000 to 7,000 tonnes of ocean waste per year, per ship.

Cities need decentralized renewable energy, but traditional wind turbines are too large, too loud, and too dangerous to wildlife for urban rooftops. This project proposes a hybrid system built around the Archimedes Liam F1 turbine, a spiral-motor design inspired by nautical shells that captures wind from all directions, starts generating at just 3 m/s wind speed, operates silently, and is completely bird-safe. AI plays three roles: designing turbine blades up to 7x more efficient for specific locations, analysing local wind patterns to find optimal rooftop placement, and scheduling maintenance during low-wind windows to avoid energy downtime. The turbine sits on a pyramid base covered in monocrystalline solar panels, so when wind drops, solar takes over, both feeding into a shared battery for uninterrupted power. A combined 1 kW setup produces 8 to 10 kWh daily, with a break-even of just 6.5 to 10 months for a typical apartment building.

Of the 92 million tonnes of textile waste generated globally each year, 80% ends up in landfills and less than 1% is recycled back into new fibers. The core problem is simple: mixed fabrics can't be chemically recycled without being sorted by material type first, and manual sorting is too slow to work at scale. This research prototype tackles that bottleneck. Clothes are fed onto a conveyor belt where a near-infrared spectroscopy sensor paired with an AI classification model identifies each fabric's fiber composition in real time, distinguishing between polyester, acrylic, nylon, and blends. The system halts on detection and a pusher mechanism drops the fabric into the correct collection box. Each sorted stream has a distinct path: pure polyester goes to chemical recycling to become virgin-quality fiber again, good-condition clothes go to shelters, and usable scraps are stored for artisans and makers. At full scale, AI-powered textile sorting could divert up to 50 million tonnes from landfills annually worldwide.

Every year, thousands of school uniforms are outgrown and thrown away, and synthetic fabrics can take over 200 years to decompose. I organised a 10-day Uniform Collection Drive at DBIS, asking the school community to drop off old uniforms and clothes at reception. Everything collected went to ReCircle, a recover-recycle-rethink organisation that removes school logos through a debranding process before channelling the fabric into recycling streams. In 10 days, the DBIS community donated 380 kg of clothing, keeping all of it out of landfills and feeding it back into a circular textile economy. A simple idea, but 380 kg of measurable impact.

It started with a beach cleanup drive in Mumbai. Seeing how much waste ends up on our coastline made me want to fix the problem closer to home. I started segregating dry waste at our flat and signed up with Bintix, a platform that provides free scheduled doorstep pickup of recyclables and routes them to 70+ recycling partners across India. Since September 2022, our household alone has logged 99 pickups, diverting 245 kg from landfill, saving 2.2 trees, and averting 538 kg of CO2 emissions. But one flat was never the goal. I presented to the managing committee and residents, walking them through the model: download the app, segregate your dry waste, schedule a free pickup, and track your impact on a live dashboard. It costs nothing, every kilogram compounds, and it turned waste segregation from an abstract idea into a trackable, zero-cost habit for the community.