The 15-year-old from Colorado, US was selected from 5,000 nominees and was interviewed by Academy award-winning Hollywood actor Angelina Jolie for TIME. Jolie is also a special envoy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
From developing an app to tackle cyberbullying to working on affordable technology that would allow one to ensure the purity of drinking water, for Gitanjali Rao, the sky is the limit.
“The world belongs to those who shape it. And however uncertain that world may feel at a given moment, the reassuring reality seems to be that each new generation produces more of what these kids…have already achieved: positive impact, in all sizes,” Time said.
Speaking from her home in Colorado, Gitanjali Rao told Angelina Jolie that she wanted to research carbon nanotube sensor technology at the Denver Water quality research lab when she was 10. "It was just that changing factor of, you know this work is going to be in our generation's hands pretty soon. So if no one else is gonna do it, I'm gonna do it," Rao added.
Gitanjali's work and achievements
At the age of 11, Rao won the Discovery Education 3M Scientist Challenge and was listed by Forbes in “30 Under 30” list for her innovations.
Rao’s latest discovery is an app called, Kindly, that detects cyberbullying at an early stage, based on artificial-intelligence technology.
In another similar development, Rao has developed another application called Tethys, a device that can measure the content of lead contamination in water with the help of carbon nanotubes.
At present, she is working on a product that will help to diagnose prescription-opioid addiction at an early stage based on protein production of the mu-opioid receptor gene.
In 2018, she was the prestigious recipient United States Environmental Protection Agency President’s Environmental Youth Award.
In the interview with TIME, the 15-year-old says, “I don’t look like your typical scientist. Everything I see on TV is that it’s an older, usually white man as a scientist. It’s weird to me that it was almost like people had assigned roles, regarding like their gender, their age, the color of their skin.”
“If I can do it, you can do it, and anyone can do it,” she added.
Everyone can make a difference: Gitanjali Rao
Rao said that her generation is facing many challenges that were never seen before.
"But then at the same time, we're facing old problems that still exist. Like, we're sitting here in the middle of a new global pandemic, and we're also still facing human-rights issues. There are problems that we did not create but that we now have to solve, like climate change and cyberbullying with the introduction of technology," she said. "I think more than anything right now, we just need to find that one thing we're passionate about and solve it. Even if it's something as small as, I want to find an easy way to pick up litter. Everything makes a difference. Don't feel pressured to come up with something big," Rao said.
Rao also shared that she always wanted to bring a smile to someone's face. "That was my everyday goal, just to make someone happy. And it soon turned into, How can we bring positivity and community to the place we live?" she said.
Rao is an ardent follower of MIT Tech Review and considers that her go-to pop culture news. “I read it constantly. I think that’s really where inspiration strikes: hearing about all these amazing people at schools like MIT and Harvard who are doing such amazing work with technology,” said the young scientist.
With the support of her parents, Bharathi and Ram Rao, local university experts, and the help of her teachers and mentors, Gitanjali invented a mastermind solution to the growing problem of drinking water contamination in Flint, United States.
Gitanjali is also a winner of the Top “Health” Pillar Prize for the TCS Ignite Innovation Student Challenge in May 2019 for developing a diagnostic tool based on advances in genetic engineering for early diagnosis of prescription opioid addiction.