CHENNAI: Gitanjali Rao drew inspiration from the news. After hearing about the Zika virus outbreak, she wanted to use gene editing to prevent this from happening in the future. When she heard about the Malaysian Airlines flight going missing (in 2014), she created a black box finder. When the great big water crisis hit the town of Flint, Michigan, she was inspired to do her best work yet — a device that could identify lead compounds in water and was portable and relatively inexpensive. She brought this to life with the help of chemically treated carbon nanotube arrays and made it simple enough that it would deliver the results to your smartphone. All this by the age of 12 years.
In the years since, Gitanjali has added more accolades to that list. She has been listed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, got the first-ever title of ‘Kid of the Year’ from Time magazine (besides being named a top innovator and featured on the cover), has been appointed as UNICEF Youth Advocate for using science to battle problems, and received the National Geographic Young Explorer Grant. She has authored the book A Young Innovator’s Guide to STEM, which helps students and educators self-develop a prescriptive first five steps to the innovation process. She has influenced over 58,000 students in 37 countries through her workshops. It was this long series of accomplishments that the US Consulate General of Chennai celebrated on February 11, on the occasion of International Day of Women and Girls in Science. It was also part of the US government body’s Diaspora Diplomacy series.
Simple steps
Talking about her journey into innovation, Gitanjali pointed out how it arose from the simple desire to be of help to her fellow beings. “There was never really one moment that helped me put science and tech together. It was the ongoing idea of coming up with solutions to global problems and quite literally doing something simple to create a difference in someone else’s life. My innovation streak started when I created my first one in second grade, which was a chair that goes underground to save space. In places like the International Space Station, which provides a lot more opportunity for astronauts to walk around and perform experiments, it is not what a lot of people think about but it was what I thought about in second grade,” she narrated.
Then came the device to detect snake poison at an early stage. From there on, she decided to create a different device every single year. “At the end of the day, my goal was to be a changemaker, to create an impact in our society. That’s why I like to say that my ideas go through a lot of different fields because there is always something new to learn about,” she pointed out.
Support in place
All this genius was not born in isolation. A well-rounded education that prioritised creativity and innovation over rote learning had been a key component. “Instead of focusing on academics and maths exams, it (her school) kind of shifted the way it teaches to problem-based learning. Our exams might be giving us a problem and solving that,” she shared. The high-schooler, who is currently taking a computer technician class will be tasked with taking apart a laptop and building it back again in her upcoming exams. How well she does that will determine her grade in the subject. Such priority leading to creativity and hands-on learning started as early as in kindergarten, she explained.
While our education system is far from addressing this in a systemic way, there is still much that can be done to foster innovation-friendly learning for students. And that begins by including them in the problem-solving process, she suggested. “Our generation is growing up in a place where we are seeing things that have never existed before. Innovation isn’t limited to research or academics. The ideas that seemed non-viable in the past are ones that are starting to become more and more a reality, because of advances in technology. In addition to that, the involvement of everyone — males, females, youth or any changemaker — is important. Everybody’s ideas do make a difference,” she declared.
The way forward
Even as we’ve made great strides in STEM education for girls across the world, there is need to combat the subconscious stigma and conditioning still associated with it, she offered. “We need to understand that introducing STEM fields to girls can work in the same way that we introduce it to boys. Girls seem to only focus on coding or robotics, there seems to be no in-between. But, we can’t limit it to that. The combination of this inter-disciplinary approach to solving problems and practical application to society is able to inspire young women. We can combine this with art, creativity, history and music,” she detailed. All it takes is the first step, she reassured to young creatives and innovators around the world.