After beating out his competition in the local leg of the James Dyson Award 2021, Mark Bantugon’s Pili Seal joins 19 other finalists selected to compete in the international stage of this year’s JDA.
Fifteen Dyson engineers, scientists, and designers from around the world reviewed 83 national finalists to curate this year’s international Top 20 shortlist of inventions. From this 20, Sir James Dyson will select his global winners, announced on November 17. The winner will receive GBP 30,000 to support the following stages of their inventions.
“What impressed me the most about the Top 20 shortlist was that many entries originated from a very human origin – empathy,” said Eilenne Loh, Floorcare Design Engineer at Dyson and Top 20 judge. “Inventions were inspired by the suffering of others, be it limitations in mobility, visual impairment, barriers in communication, and so on. Addressing these issues shows that young people care and want to bring a genuine difference to those that are less fortunate.”
Bantugon’s invention came from the idea of finding a more sustainable and safer sealant for aircrafts’ integral fuel tanks. The graduate from the Philippine State College of Aeronautics combined his family’s farming background with what he’s learning in the field to use the waste of pili tree resin or “spent resin/de-oiled resin” as a sealant.
He will go against projects like bio-leather made from citrus peels, a wearable biomedical device for at-home intraocular pressure testing, sustainable sanitation for bottom-of-the-pyramid communities, an assistive drawing device, and a new male contraceptive.
Bantugon joins another Filipino who’s been recognized by JDA on the international stage. In 2020, Carvey Ehren Maigue from Mapua University became the competition’s first JDA Sustainability winner for AuREUS. He developed a system that uses upcycled crop waste to absorb stray UV light from sunlight and convert it to clean renewable electricity.