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The Young Inventor Who Is a "Minder" of a Business of HerOwn

At age 11, Lilianna Zyszkowski designed a new life-saving device to help people track their

medication. That was jst the !eginningf you were to look into the personal histories of the worlds great inventors, you would likely find

that at some point they came up with innovations that were more pedestrian than the ones that madethem famous. For example, booby traps to keep their siblings out of their personal space. One of

them involved dental floss, because it was so small and strong, but you dont see it, ilianna

!ys"kowski recalls of one of her own early creations. #he blushes slightly. $ lot of things % didback then&% would say they werent very beneficial to the world.

#itting at a caf' in the bucolic (erkshire )ountains, !ys"kowski straightens her spine and

composes her hands in front of her coffee in a way that makes clear that now, at the wi"ened age of

*+, she is well past these uvenile antics. -hese days she is, in her own phrase, famousish for

putting her talents to better use, by designing inventions that do help people. /er best known is the0ill)inder, a device that tracks medication intake. !ys"kowski came up with the idea in the sixthgrade, after her grandfather accidentally overdosed on his blood thinners and ended up in the

hospital. %t was pretty scary, she says.

!ys"kowski was not going to sit around fretting. %m like, O1, how can we fix this2 she says.

-hats my mentality.

/er research suggested that the touch sensors found in common -3 remote controls&capacitive

chips that react to pressure&would also be useful conductors, and they were cheap and plentifulonline. #he ordered a batch and, with the help of videos she found online, figured out how to solder

them to the bottom of plastic #)-4-F# pillstorage boxes shed bought at a drugstore. 5singcopper wires, she connected the chips to a microcontroller, which she programmed 6after reading

about coding7 to notify a private -witter account whenever a persons finger touched the sensors.

-witter sent an alert to the users smartphone, creating a record of pills taken.

-he 0ill)inder was a hit at the annual kids science fair in her area, the 8onnecticut %nvention8onvention, where !ys"kowski took home multiple pri"es. #oon after, she began working with

8aliforniabased 9atekeeper %nnovation to add 0ill)inder technology to its #afer ock

combinationbased pillbottle cap. -his past spring, !ys"kowski presented the device at the 4hite/ouse #cience Fair. -heres Obama, and theres me, the only girl in the background, she says,

showing me a picture in which she stands out from a crowd thick with guys in glasses.

$lthough her business cards describe her as an inventor, !ys"kowski doesnt want to paint herself

with ust that brush. )y bigvision thing is the %nternet of -hings, she says. /aving you and thethings you do talk to devices, and having the devices know what to do with that information and

connect to everything else and help you&% am really into that. #he admires :lon )usk, whoseinterest in technological advancement spans multiple industries and applications. % like people with

big ideas, she says.

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$ shingle for )inder %ndustries hangs outside the door of the !ys"kowski family office, although

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the business is not yet incorporated.

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-he following year, after hearing a story on the radio about infants who died after being left in cars,

she came up with the (aby )inder. $fter a weekend babysitting for her Byearold cousins, shewas inspired to add temperature and moisture sensors to a piece of conductive cloth that, affixed to

a diaper, delivered alerts about a babys whereabouts, body temperature and diaper efficacy to a

smartphone. % used (luetooth lowenergy, because it had ust come out, !ys"kowski says. % try touse something new and kind of cutting edge every time.

@uring the development process, !ys"kowski says, she often asks her parents for advice. % bring

them ideas and they are, like, /ow are you going to solve that2

4e send her links, says Fena.

$ll the time, !ys"kowski says. $rticles, articles, articles.

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%t was an article that alerted Fena that the son of one of her old friends had started 9atekeeper

%nnovation after a family member had become addicted to pain medication. -he companys storyappealed to ilis humanitarian instincts, and now she and 9atekeeper have filed a provisional

patent for a #afer ock bottle with 0ill)inder technology, and they hope to bring the product tomarket next year. -he prototypes she displayed at the 4hite /ouse #cience Fair in $pril showed the

devices evolution. 4hile the original microcontroller was the si"e of ilis hand, the technologyhad advanced to the point that it fit inside what she calls a smartcap. 4hen the cap is removed, a

tiny band of :@s transmits an encrypted message via (luetooth to a smartphone app, which

notifies the patient, or a doctor or caregiver, that the pills were taken&presumably. One thing % amrunning into is people saying, >%f they open the pill cap you dont know if they actually took the pill

or not, says !ys"kowski. (ut it will still log the fact that they opened the cap and thought aboutit.

$nd there are other benefits, including an ability to link the bottle cap to a pharmacy prescription, acapacity that has intrigued lawmakers looking for ways to stem the illegal distribution of

prescription drugs. $fter the 4hite /ouse #cience Fair, !ys"kowski was invited to meet with#enator