From Costa Rica to Seoul: Aramco Innovation Award champions claim their prize and visit Korea's AI and robotics industry

Team Sprout placed first at the World Robot Olympiad 2025 final, received the Aramco Innovation Award, and is now exploring Seoul's robotics and AI frontier.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, April 7, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Team Sprout from Costa Rica is in Seoul this week as winners of the 2025 Aramco Innovation Award – a special award for the top teams in the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) category Future Innovators. Alanna Music, Emma Music, and Joel Chen won with their project Sprout, an intelligent, automated space greenhouse. The three students and their coach arrived on April 6, together with fellow Aramco Innovation Award recipients, for a week of access to engineers, researchers, academics, and institutions at the leading edge of the robotics and AI industry.

The prize is part of Aramco’s global STEM commitment, in partnership with WRO, which reflects its efforts to empower the next generation to imagine the future and build it. Each year, thousands of students from over 100 countries participate in WRO programs, a remarkable testament to how powerful collective learning can be.

The schedule for three teams that received the Aramco Innovation Award includes a workshop with Aramco subsidiary S-Oil, during which the teams will learn about analytical laboratories and explore how chemical production processes power modern technology. A visit to Naver 1784, the world's first robot-friendly building, which serves as a large-scale testbed for advanced robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud technologies, is included. There, students whose projects tackle real-world problems through robotics will discover what the future looks like at scale. Team Sprout and the fellow teams will also visit Doosan Robotics for basic training and hands-on experience alongside engineers. They will also spend time at Seoul National University and Korea University’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering for research-level engagement with AI and robotics — exactly the kind of environment that inspires projects like Sprout.

“Our trip to Seoul represents an opportunity to connect two worlds – Costa Rica, with its deep understanding of nature, and South Korea, with its leadership in technology. With our project Sprout, we are combining both to design a smart greenhouse that can grow food in extreme environments, even beyond Earth. I’m most excited to see how Korea applies robotics and AI in real-world systems, and I want to bring that inspiration into Sprout and back to Costa Rica to keep building solutions that can have a global impact,” said Emma Music (16), Team Sprout, Costa Rica.

Hussain N. Hanbazazah, Aramco Vice President of Communications Operations & Corporate Citizenship, said: “At Aramco, we see STEM as a cornerstone of future advancment, and we aim to expand access to high-quality STEM education by enabling young talent through strategic partnerships worldwide. Our collaboration with the World Robot Olympiad reflects these ambitions by equipping young minds with the skills, knowledge, and confidence to shape the future. The Aramco Innovation Award celebrates the next generation of pioneers and problem-solvers. Through the teams’ work, we witness what happens when imagination meets purpose and when curiosity is given the chance to lead.”

"WRO exists to show young people what they are capable of — every team that competes leaves with more confidence and a clearer sense of what they can build. The Aramco Innovation Award takes that further: for the top teams, a week inside Seoul's robotics and AI industry shows them exactly where their ideas could take them,” said Claus Ditlev Christensen, World Robot Olympiad Association Secretary General.

Ends

About the Future Innovators Category
Future Innovators is a project-based challenge in which student teams build robotic solutions to real-world problems. In 2025, more than 5,700 teams across three age groups competed in the Future Innovators category.

About the World Robot Olympiad Association
World Robot Olympiad™ Association (WRO^®) is a global non-profit that empowers over 175,000 young people across more than 100 countries through hands-on robotics challenges. The competition helps students develop creative problem-solving skills while fostering international collaboration and STEM leadership. Learn more: wro-association.org

About the Aramco Innovation Award
The Aramco Innovation Award, presented in partnership with WRO, is an annual STEM prize recognizing exceptional student-led robotics solutions from WRO’s Future Innovators category. Now in its second year, the award celebrates youth-driven innovation with real-world relevance, technical excellence, and social impact.

Tina Lee
World Robot Olympiad Association
press@wro-association.org
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