Coding for Kids
Women in STEM: Gitanjali Rao
In case you missed it, Time Magazine named 15-year-old Gitanjali Rao its Kid of the Year for 2020. She’s an amazing girl from Colorado who’s already making a difference in this world and a great choice to be featured in Tynker’s Women in STEM series for the month of March.
Time honored Gitanjali for “using technology to tackle issues ranging from contaminated drinking water to opioid addiction and cyberbullying.” In her Time interview, Gitanjali talked about her process:
“Observe, brainstorm, research, build and communicate.”
Contaminated Drinking Water
Gitanjali first gained recognition back in 2017 when she was just eleven by taking action to help solve the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Finding current methods of recognizing lead in water slow and unreliable, Gitanjali sought to make an inexpensive and portable lead-detecting device. She told ABC News:
“I was appalled by the number of people affected by lead contamination in water.”
After reading about new technologies that can detect hazardous substances on MIT’s Materials Science and Engineering website, she developed a way to use carbon nanotubes to send water quality information via Bluetooth. She calls her device Tethys, named after the Greek goddess of fresh water.
Education
Gitanjali attends a public charter school called STEM School Highlands Ranch. The campus has three engineering labs, four computer labs, and a chemistry lab. In college, she plans to study cell biology, genetic engineering, and computational genomics.
This month, her new book, A Young Innovator’s Guide to STEM: 5 Steps To Problem Solving For Students, Educators, and Parents, is being released. It proposes to identify problems and develop solutions by building on the latest developments in science and taking an alternate path to innovation.
What She’s Up To Now
Lately, Gitanjali has been working on developing a phone and web tool called Kindly, which uses artificial intelligence technology to detect possible cyberbullying. She started by hard-coding words that could be used in bullying but emphasized that the idea is not to punish but to educate and make kids feel safe:
“You type in a word or phrase, and it’s able to pick it up if it’s bullying, and it gives you the option to edit it or send it the way it is.”
She’s also begun running “innovation workshops,” to inspire her fellow students to get involved in finding solutions to other problems by presenting lesson plans, labs, and contests. She also gives Ted Talks on topics like A Young Scientist’s Guide to Problem Solving and Innovation.
In addition, she’s working on finding a way for people in third-world countries to identify bio-contaminants like parasites in their water. Gitanjali is also interested in genetics, working to help to diagnose prescription-opioid addiction at an early stage based on protein production of the mu opioid receptor gene.
She’s also managed to become an accomplished pianist while finding time to work toward obtaining her pilot’s license.
Going Forward
Making a positive impact on people and the planet, Gitanjali is a great example of the kind of determination and leadership that Tynker loves and a true inspiration to her generation of girls who are thinking about a career in STEM-related fields.
“We just need to find that one thing we’re passionate about and solve it.”
We can’t wait to see what Gitanjali does next!
