He wanted to make something similar to an electronic whiteboard but far cheaper and useable worldwide. His working prototype of a whiteboard on a motorized conveyor belt system that can scroll it up and down is more efficient with time and space than a traditional whiteboard.

In his Advanced Placement Physics class - but long before that, too, throughout his time in school - he noticed his teachers struggle with having to write down and erase the same notes for each of their classes, if they could even reach the top of their whiteboards. Nationals, at the Henry Ford museum complex in Dearborn, Michigan.Īhn, speaking from a summer-long vacation in South Korea, described himself as “a really dedicated engineer” who’s learned a lot about robotics lately and wants to have a career in it. before going to school those days - involved between having the idea in January for an auto rolling and erasing whiteboard, or ARE Board, and submitting it for competition.Īll that work paid off earlier this month for Ahn when he was among about 70 K-12 inventors from across the country to win awards at the Raytheon Technologies Invention Convention U.S. “That gave me hope and courage to fight through failure, and stay up late to do that.”įor him, there was a good month’s worth of nights of staying up until 4 a.m.

“Any movies that had that lovely scene of them really trying hard and working through their failures, I love those scenes,” he said. Jason Ahn’s favorite parts of Marvel’s “Iron Man” movies are not the superhero fights in hi-tech armored suits, but the scenes showing the process of invention that he’s gone through himself to win national recognition for an innovative classroom whiteboard design.Īhn, 17, and a rising senior at Ames High School, said, “People love the Iron Man suit, but the real part of me falling in love with Iron Man in all those movies was not the actual product that they made, but it’s how they made it.” This story was originally written for and printed in the Ames Tribune. Infinite Campus: Staff & Teacher PortalĪmes Student-Inventor, Inspired by ‘Iron Man’ and Not Afraid To Fail, Wins National Recognition.Employee Information and Self-Service Forms.School Safety, Alerts, and Weather Procedures.