Top Teens

Meet the 13 winners of the 2016 Bethesda Magazine Extraordinary Teen Awards

April 7, 2016 1:24 p.m.

Michael Kronmiller

Senior, Bullis School

Drones often get a bad rap. Michael Kronmiller says some criticism is justified, but the Bullis senior envisions small unmanned aircraft systems being used for good causes.

Michael, 19, is working to design and manufacture a drone that could locate disaster victims and inspect vulnerable bridges in harsh terrain. The teen came up with the idea after his older brother, William, traveled to Nepal and told Michael how difficult it was to find people stranded by avalanches.

Since his sophomore year, Michael has put in countless hours and collaborated with engineers, geologists and legal experts in a successful effort to develop two prototype drones. The drones are low cost and suitable for challenging environments. Now he is working on a third, complete with a thermal camera and radar to detect movement under rubble and snow.

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“Here’s a kid who is thinking globally,” says Lynn Kittel, Michael’s college counselor at Bullis.

Michael, who is a leader in the school robotics club, established the USA-Nepal STEM Project to connect Bullis with Kanjirowa National Higher Secondary School in Kathmandu on the venture. He has sent drone kits to the Nepal school and is working on a curriculum for students to build them.

He had planned to travel to Nepal with a group of Bullis teachers during spring break in 2015. The teachers, however, weren’t cleared by the school administration to go because of civil unrest. But Michael went anyway. “He just powered through in such a positive way,” Kittel says.

Michael met his brother in Nepal to test the technology and work with students. The trip was motivating, and Michael returned to Kathmandu in March. “If there’s ever a tough spot, I just think about how beneficial this project is and how much kids at the school love working on it,” says Michael, who helped Bullis host teachers from Kanjirowa last fall to discuss ways to collaborate beyond the drone project.

The scope of Michael’s project has created a buzz at Bullis and raised the bar for others, says Faith Darling, the school’s STEM coordinator. “While I don’t expect very many of these kinds of projects to come along often, it gives kids the idea that this can happen… . That will leave a lasting impression,” she says.

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Michael, who is interested in studying engineering, robotics or computer science in college, says the experience has improved his public speaking skills and made him feel more comfortable pitching technology executives. He’s now focusing on crowdfunding for the drone project.

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