Onus on educational institutions to create environment for problem-solving, says US teen innovator Gitanjali Rao

The US Consulate General in Chennai celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls in Science by providing a platform to Gitanjali Rao, a 16-year-old inventor based out of Colorado, United States, to highlight her journey towards global recognition as a young innovator in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) field. The event also aimed at addressing the environments in schools and higher educational institutions that can foster innovation in young minds. 

Rao, who has been named TIME Magazine's Kid of Year, as well as the Top Young Innovator in 2020, among a whole host of other awards, has been harnessing technology to provide simple solutions to some crucial problems the world grapples with. For instance, the contaminated water crisis in the town of Flint in the state of Michigan in the States has upended lives, and when Rao watched this on the news as a 10-year-old, she got all the inspiration she needed to develop Tethys, an app that measures lead content in the water. Apart from this, she has inventions in her name in areas such as cyberbullying and opioid addiction. To encourage other young women and girls to make their mark in STEM, she conducts workshops on innovation across the globe. 

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For the event, which was organised in collaboration with the US Consulates General Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Mumbai, Rao was interviewed by Garvita Gulati, who is India's very own young prodigy in the spectrum of environmental protection and activism. She is the founder of Why Waste, which works on checking the wastage of water in India. Responding to queries on fostering innovation in young minds, Rao spoke about how one can upscale interests into innovations, by simply finding a problem to solve and applying technology to find the solutions. She also chipped in on failure and said, "While people are often scared of failure, it can be a process that guides one onto better solutions." 

Rao is also the author of the book Young Innovator's Guide to STEM. She also spoke about the burden of expectations that came with the recognition, and added that the exchange of ideas is an important aspect of the process of innovation.