A Grade 10 student in Burlington, Ont., hopes his award-winning invention of a bionic turtle will help make underwater ecosystems safer and cleaner.

Evan Budz used artificial intelligence (AI) to develop the autonomous bionic sea turtle robot for ecological monitoring. The invention won the first-place prize in the European Union Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS).

"With my project, I've created a robot that swims underwater similarly to a sea turtle, and designed it to conduct the autonomous ecological monitoring so it's able to detect different types of threats that may occur in an underwater environment, from coral bleaching to invasive species," he told David Common, host of CBC Radio's .

Evan, 15, was also awarded Best Project (Innovation) at the 2025 Canada-Wide Science Fair (CW

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