Meet the Inventor Propelling the Future

It was clear Tom R. was destined for greatness when his first word was “clock” and he mastered the art of making lightbulbs by just eight years old. This sophomore student at Pudong campus is a creative engineer inventing amazing new things. While some of us might be struggling to set up our Wi-Fi, he’s working on his speaker company and building drones, both of which he received patents for. We’re excited to see what else he comes up with in his junior and senior years.

Meet Tom, the inventor propelling the future:  

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you’ve been working on lately?

I'm passionate about engineering and turning an idea into an actual, tangible product. Lately, I've been focused on my speaker company and I'm also working on drones. I’ve been designing the speakers with CAD software and then working with over 10 factories to get them produced. The idea with my speaker company is to be able to make a speaker that is cheaper than the competitor, like Bose and JBL, but still sounds good acoustically. The way I do that is by using new manufacturing methods like 3D printing. I’ve received two patents for my speaker – design and utility.  

As for the drones, I've been working on high altitude drones. My latest drone, the TAV3 (TAV = Tom’s Aerial Vehicle), also received design and utility patents. Essentially, the idea with this drone is that not only can it go high, but it can go really fast, which will allow it to be able to zoom up mountains really quickly or do things more efficiently. It actually has a top speed of approximately 135 km/h  and a maximum service altitude of 23,000 feet.  

Wow, you’ve been a busy guy. Have you always been passionate about engineering and inventing?

Yeah, I really think I was interested in this pretty much since I was born. When I was a baby my parents told me I was always looking at lights and clocks. My first word was actually “clock”, probably because I was looking at one and thinking “Oooh, spinny thing!” There was one thing that was kind of embarrassing, but really funny. You know how an airplane propeller spins? Well, when I was a kid, and I was running on the track in PE class in kindergarten, I actually spun my arms around because I thought that that would make me go faster. I ended up being last place.

When I was  about eight, I started tinkering in my lab, building things out of cardboard. And when I say “lab”, it was just a small, makeshift thing equipped with a soldering iron and a box of tools. The first thing I built was a lightbulb. 

When you came to SAS in Grade 4, did SAS help you pursue your passions even more?

I like how supportive the teachers are at SAS and how they’ve encouraged me to pursue what I’m passionate about. I really want to credit my middle school teachers, Mr. David, Ms. Higginbottom, and Mr. Carozza.  One of my  Exploratory classes, which is basically a program where kids can explore certain topics in short 45-minute sessions, was with Mr. David building CO2 cars and he let me take it a step further by letting me build a nitromethane powered car.  Another Exploratory class was 3D printing with Ms. Higginbottom where she taught me CAD software, which I would go on to use in my future product designs.

In Grade 8, Mr. Carozza inspired me a lot. We had a lot of meetups and discussed a lot of stuff together. He was someone I could talk to. One day Mr. Carozza was telling me about an older kid in high school named Cleo who really likes engineering and is similar to me. At the time I had an issue with a portable air conditioner I was building so Mr. Carozza asked Cleo if he could help me. Cleo gave me advice about how to solve this issue and, in Grade 8, I ended up building three air conditioners using thermal, electric, and evaporative cooling hybrid methods.

What are your plans for the future?

I have some big plans for the future that I would really like to implement. As a long-term goal, I would like to start tech companies and be a founder of a Fortune 500 tech company. My short-term goal is to just keep improving with the company that I have right now. I'm more focused on trying to learn rather than making big profits at this point. Starting the company I have now has been a great learning experience, and if I fail, I will try again because running a company is not as easy as I thought. And hopefully in the future it will lead me to starting multiple tech companies.

My dream university is probably MIT or Caltech. I just heard about MIT developing a new propeller type for drones. I was thinking about potentially implementing them and improving upon them with my next drone, the TAV4.  

From popsicle-stick drones to patent-worthy products, Tom is creating amazing things that we can only dream of. We have no doubt his inventions will change the world for the better and we can only imagine what he'll be achieving as he continues to pursue his dreams. And we'll be sure to keep an eye on the skies for TAV4.