SAS Sophomore Wins the 2026 HTEC
For Shanghai American School sophomore Ouya W., a problem at sea became an engineering challenge worth solving. His project, Marine AI Scout, is an AI-powered maritime search and rescue camera system designed to continuously scan the ocean, identify people in the water, calculate their location, and alert a ship’s crew.
Ouya began developing the idea after speaking with the Dutch Coast Guard about the limitations of existing maritime camera systems, including high cost, poor performance in rough conditions, and the need for human monitoring. He saw an opportunity to create something that could watch the water continuously and help crews respond faster when someone is in danger.
Marine AI Scout started to come to life at SAS through the Eagle Innovator program, where Ouya won 10,000 RMB in funding to purchase parts and develop an early prototype. Access to Makerspace equipment, components, funding, and teachers gave him room to experiment, build, refine, and keep pushing the idea further.
“I thought, why not make a better version and add automatic recognition to find people without someone actually looking at it?” Ouya said. “When it finds a person, it sends an alarm and calculates the geographic location, so you know where they are and can go save them.”
The current prototype uses computer vision to recognize people in the water, but Ouya’s plans go much further. He envisions a waterproof, stabilized system with improved visible-light and infrared cameras that can operate in low light and difficult weather conditions.
That combination of practical purpose and technical execution helped Marine AI Scout stand out at the recent 2026 Hurun Teenage Entrepreneurship Competition (HTEC). More than 300 teams entered when the competition began last October, and SAS students made a strong showing throughout. By the semifinals, the round was starting to look a little like an SAS gathering, with seven of the 10 teams coming from SAS. Three SAS teams then advanced to the final, including sophomores Catherine Q. and Wendy C. and eighth grader Veronica C., with Ouya ultimately taking the championship. At the final awards ceremony, SAS was also recognized with the HTEC Annual Outstanding Partner School Award for its support of student innovation and entrepreneurship.
Hurun cited Marine AI Scout’s real-world value, high level of completeness, and the substantial upgrades Ouya made between the semifinals and finals as reasons for his win. The championship also includes access to equity investment benefits worth millions of RMB.
Winning HTEC is not the finish line for Ouya. He plans to continue developing Marine AI Scout into a real product, taking an idea that began as a prototype and moving it closer to a system that could one day help save lives at sea.
