Canton Intermediate School Student Already a Recognized Inventor

Most 11-year-old boys dream of becoming the next Derek Jeter, Tom Brady or LeBron James.

Not so for Gabriel Mesa, a rising sixth-grader at Canton Intermediate School whose hope for the future is in the arena not of basketball, but of bio-medical technology and science. And, given his inventiveness, it’s easy to see that he is well on his way of becoming a bio-medical engineer and a doctor.

Consider his achievements in the last three years.

In 2009, at the ripe old age of 9, Gabriel won the Artoli Family Inspiration Award at the Connecticut Invention Convention for developing a new way of safely attaching tracheotomy tubes to patients.

Last year, as a 10-year-old, Gabriel won the Microsoft and Recognized Inventor awards for inventing a watch that builds trust with patients who suffer from dementia or schizophrenia by showing soothing images of the patients’ families interspersed with doctors’ orders that can be updated wirelessly by the doctors.

So what did he do for an encore this year?

He won his second Recognized Inventor award, this time for inventing an IV Alert that prevents the intravenous cord from being disconnected through visual and auditory alerts.

The invention was so impressive that it won the Connecticut state championship at the 2011 Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, which Gabriel entered independently of the school’s Invent, Classify, Experiment, and Research (ICER) competition and Connecticut Invention Connection.

The Young Scientist Challenge is the premier science competition for middle school students; Mesa was notified of his achievement June 29.

“When I first heard the news, I was really surprised that I won out of all the people in Connecticut,” Gabriel said. “I was really happy, too.”

The IV alert has orange striping on the tubing as a visual alert to keep from stumbling over it.

In addition, if the IV is pulled out, an alarm goes off to notify the attending doctor or nurse.

The inspiration for the invention came when Gabriel saw a doctor accidentally trip over his grandfather’s IV and knock it out while his grandfather was hospitalized and was unable to articulate what had happened.

“I’m hoping to help people with these problems,” Gabriel said.

Gabriel’s father, Carlos Mesa, said that his son has always grabbed staples and tape to make up his own elaborate games.

Gabriel would take card stock and toilet paper tubes to make his own castles and gift boxes.

“We have to run to Staples a lot for supplies,” Gabriel’s mother, Ann Hunter, said. “He reads A LOT. Keeping up with him academically has been a constant challenge. We’re lucky to have a school district that has been willing to work with him.”

His interest in the biomedical field is no fleeting matter.

“He’s been interested in medical science since he was two,” Hunter said. “He wanted to know all the bones and how the brain works.”

Dr. Jordan Grossman, the principal for Canton Intermediate, was thrilled at Gabriel’s success in the science competition.

“He’s a very motivated and enthusiastic young man,” Grossman said. “He’s always striving to think differently and improve upon his love for learning. He’s a gifted young man. It’s a tremendous honor for Gabriel, his family and the school. This has been a big year for us. This is an example of how proud we are of our students and what they achieve.”