Did you know that Connecticut sent  55 winning students from the Connecticut Invention Convention to the National Convention and tied with Ohio for the most awards received?  Makes you proud.  A 14 year old Southington student won the National award.  Lucca Riccio invented the “message mask” that took the top honor.  That peaks your curiosity, doesn’t it?  The story behind it is amazing.

Lucca is one of those kids that is curious about everything; he wants to know how everything works.  His curiosity has frustrated his family but they credit the school and its project based learning with nurturing Lucca’s creativity, filling in where they were unable to.

The message mask is an oxygen mask that has a noise-canceling microphone attached to the mouthpiece. The microphone can connect to a speaker via Bluetooth, allowing the patient to be heard loudly and clearly.

His idea came from his dying grandmother.  The family was called to the hospital for a last visit and Lucca, his family and grandmother were frustrated when she tried to talk to them through her oxygen mask.  So Lucca thought about it and came up with his idea.  He entered it in the Connecticut Invention Convention and the rest is history.