A group of young girls have proven that sometimes the most innovative ideas do not have to come from the minds of seasoned engineers.

Six young girls, Courtney Pohlen, 11, Gaby Dempsey, 11, Maria Werner Anderson, 11, Zoe Groat, 12, Mackenzie Grewell, 12 and Kate Murray, 12, teamed up when they got a call from recent ISU construction engineering graduate, Claire Bassett.

“I was in the National Association of Women In Construction and they were contacted by Girl Scouts of Greater Iowa to provide coaches and mentors for all girls teams,” Bassett said. “I said that I would be happy to coach a team if there was one conveniently located for me in Ames or nearby. GSGI contacted local troop leaders and girls from three different troops joined the original team.”

As soon as the team was put together in 2009, Bassett and Melissa Murray, mother of member Kate and leader of the Girl Scout Troop, immediately began working to prepare the girls for a FIRST Lego League competition.

A year later, the team brought in another coach, Zach Pachol, freshman in civil engineering.

“This year was more of a step back for me to see how things are done and what needs to be done,” Pachol said. “Next year I’ll be more involved with the coaching role and will be stepping up a lot more. During the brainstorming process i helped with thinking of ideas on what could be used. However it was most of the girls’ idea and that is what really impresses me because they came up with it.”

For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology is a nonprofit organization that was started as a way to “inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication and leadership,” according to the official website.

FIRST Lego League is a competition that “introduces younger students to real-world engineering challenges by building LEGO-based robots to complete tasks on a thematic playing surface.”

The Ames-based Girl Scout troop, the Flying Monkeys entered a regional FIRST Lego League competition in Des Moines in early December. However, they began preparing for the competition a bit before that.

“The girls came in and we found that this year’s theme was ‘Body Forward,'” said Murray. “So we started coming up with ideas that would improve or heal the human body. The girls thought about doing a prosthetic so we decided on a prosthetic hand and began researching support websites and looking at people’s real-life problems.”

“When we started the team, we focused a lot of time and energy on learning how to program Lego Mindstorms and experimenting with different robot designs,” Bassett said. “I helped them apply math to programming their FLL missions. This past season, Body Forward, we focused more on the research project and arranged several field trips for the girls to meet local professionals.”

After doing their research for the prosthetic hand, the girls found a little girl named Danielle from Duluth, Ga., who was born without fingers on her dominant right hand.

Murray said that they decided to make the hand for Danielle to use so she could write and draw. They named the device BOB-1.

“The BOB-1 hand device is a great, inexpensive invention that follows the KISS (Keep It Simple Silly) principle beautifully,” Bassett said. “It has helped a little girl in Georgia color and write, and more importantly, started her thinking about how else she can use her unusual limb. The Flying Monkeys have already re-engineered the BOB-1 once to improve it for Danielle, and are now planning to make a similar device for her newly adopted brother.”

From the regionals in Des Moines, the Flying Monkeys advanced to the state championship at Iowa State in January, where they won the innovation award — $20,000 — to put toward patenting their device.

“Right now we have what is known as a provisional patent,” Murray said. “This is a year-long patent that protects the device until we can get a utility patent. About 60-70% of patents get approved so we’re hoping for good results.”

Future plans for the Flying Monkeys include attending the North American Open next month in San Diego, Calif., and competing against 76 other teams from across the country.

Since graduating in December, Bassett has acquired a job two hours away but still keeps up with the team.

“I will be traveling with them to San Diego for the North American Open and to DC for the Global Innovation Award Ceremony,” Bassett said. “After we get those trips out of the way, I plan to work with the girls on the weekends to help them develop their CAD skills which should help them with their patent and product development processes. We have a lot of surprises though, so who knows what we will be doing in two months.”