My name is Julian E. Mardjekaj (J.E.M.), I am 17 years old, and I am currently a high school senior in Connecticut.

My passions:

I would describe myself as a very hands-on person. Growing up being a first-generation American, I have been surrounded by nothing but determined, hard workers my whole life. My love for improving inefficiencies, and devising solutions to burdensome issues stems from my parents’ long history of renovating and “flipping” houses for a living. While I do have a strong passion for both math (Calculus) and science (Physics), I particularly love being able use my hands-on personality along with my skills in the science field, and my coding abilities, to create devices that have real-world applicability and impact. Most importantly, devices that answer pressing questions or perform vital jobs.

Why Create a Water Sensor:

Growing up on the CT Shoreline, and around the mouth of the Connecticut River, aquatic recreation has always taken up a large part of my free time. Whether it is padelboarding on local lakes, or boating on the CT river or the Long Island Sound, water is constantly in my world.

Naturally, over the years, I have become particularly interested in the safety and the quality of the water in which I have spent so much of my time; though, my interest in water quality was not solely for the public who periodically use the water, but mainly for the organic ecosystems that live in these respective bodies of water.

And so, the creation of a device—spanning from all of the necessary coding (in C++) to the soldering and fabricating of the main apparatus— that could semi-autonomously monitor the water quality of local bodies of water over prolonged periods of time became my main focus. With it, the idea for an Arduino-based water sensor arose.