This February, four students ofIBA seized the glory by winning an international competition “Thought for Food Challenge”. Team “Innovision” comprised of SamihaZaker, ShafinazHossain, Lamia Anwar Shama and RubyatTasfia Rahman became the winners from a pool of 10 finalists in the beautiful city of Lisbon. These girls are currently 4th year students with a passion in entrepreneurship, agriculture and women empowerment.

Team InnoVision developed a solar-powered micro-climate chamber called FoodFreshfor small scale farmers and market vendors that increase shelf life of fruits and vegetables using an evaporation cooling system. The solution consists of a plastic box that has an evaporator inside which, when added water to, produces water vapour by evaporation. This cools down the temperature inside and creates moisture that keeps fruits and vegetables hydrated, thus preserving them. This is an affordable substitute for refrigeration to reduce food loss in developing countries, the overall contribution to food security and its potential to remove the use of poisonousformalin from the supply chain.

This year 10 teams from universities around the world made it to the finals of the TFF Global Challenge. Teams came from universities in Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, India, Sweden, Uganda and the USA. The teams were given the opportunity to pitch their innovative ideas and win $10000 for getting their idea started. In a surprising chain of events, instead of one runner up, the judges announced two runner ups- Teams FoPo Food Powder from Sweden and Aahaar from India, each receiving a funding of $5000.

The competition was a part of the two-day Thought For Food Global Summit (13-14^th February) taking place in Covento Do Beatoin Lisbon where people from all around the world came together to discuss the issues of food insecurity and how to feed 9 billion people by the year 2050.

The team hopes to actualize their solution in their home country in the upcoming days with the funding that they have received from the competition and eradicate Formalin from the food chain altogether to create a healthy and safe future.