Courtesy of Society for Science
- 12-year-old Shanya Gill won a national science competition for her fire detection device.
- The device works quicker than the average smoke detector by using a thermal camera.
- Gill said she hopes to use the $25,000 prize to take her device to market.
Last year, sixth grader Shanya Gill and her family were shocked to hear a restaurant behind their house had burned to the ground.
"That was really moving for my family because it was something that we had never really experienced before," Gill told Insider.
It inspired her to create a fire-detection device that could identify fires faster than an average smoke detector and send a text to users to alert them of a fire.