Invent. Innovate. Impact. Time Magazine First-Ever Kid of the Year Gitanjali Rao Shares Her Story
Meet Today Woman Dreamer, Time Magazine First Ever Kid of the Year, Gitanjali Rao. At the young age of 15, Gitanjali is an inventor and innovator, tackling the world’s most pressing issues. From safe drinking water to fighting cyberbullying and more. Gitanjali has a passion for problem-solving. She writes, “My motivation to solve problems in society started in a very simple manner to solve problems that we face on a daily basis.” A must read for all women, moms, and daughters. Enjoy Gitanjali’s interview with Women Who Win!
1. Gitanjali, firstly, congratulations on being named TIME's First-Ever Kid of the Year and for your incredible accomplishments! We are so excited to spotlight you, so thank you for taking the time to do this. Your innovations address huge problems in the world. What sparked your motivation?
Image Courtesy of Time Magazine
My motivation to solve problems in society started in a very simple manner to solve problems that we face on a daily basis. Our family always watched the news together and we would discuss the issues. I always felt the need to do something about it though I didn’t have any solution in my mind. However, some of the issues stayed with me for longer and when I read some other technology article, I made a connection and looked for solutions that can solve problems. Science and technology have been developed enough that we do not have to start with a blank paper every time. Lot can be built with path breaking innovations already available today as building blocks. This is a very unconventional way and slowly this became a habit.
I hope that while most of my innovations are prototypes with some research, it brings awareness to people with facts, causes and effects that allows them to take action on their own.
For example, when I started researching for Tethys, the lead detection tool, people knew about lead in drinking water in Flint. Just three months into my research, I found that there are several states, communities and part of the world with the same issue, but it just didn’t gain enough attention. As we try to solve problems using science, bringing awareness to these problems are equally important. I noticed that other Universities started to take up this research in different parts of the world and while I may have not directly impacted, most states started working towards specific legislation and creating laws to ensure testing for lead in school drinking water towards specific legislation and creating laws to ensure testing for lead in school drinking water.
2. You already have some incredible innovations in the works, like Tethys, Epione, and Kindly. Could you tell us what inspired you to create these three inventions? What is the need you saw?
Thank you so much. I'm usually inspired by issues with a personal connection. I try my best to understand them and look for ways to address them. I am not always successful, but the few times I succeed I feel like I have contributed in some way.
My innovation, Tethys - I heard about the water crisis in Flint, MI. This was the moment when I knew that I had to act. It was already shocking that many locations in the world didn’t have clean water, but in our own, developed country, it seemed unreal. I couldn’t accept the fact that there was a city in our country were children my age were drinking a poison every single day that caused lifelong damage to their mental capacity, vital organs, and even normal growth just because they were using water in their daily lives. It was unfair that I had clean water to drink but nobody in Flint did. I knew I needed to do something about it so I decided to shoot my shot. Tethys is a device that detects lead in drinking water faster and more inexpensive than the current tools out there today. It uses carbon nanotube sensor technology and sends all the data to your mobile phone on the custom built Tethys app. When the Tethys cartridge is dipped into lead contaminated water, the lead in water binds to the chloride ions forming lead chloride molecules which increases the amount of resistance to the flow of current and decreases the conductivity. The conductivity drop is correlated to the severity of the lead compounds in water. The app then reads the results as safe, slightly contaminated, or critical giving users the option to upload their test results, location, and time of test so that a heat map can be formed to show locations with more lead levels and less lead levels accordingly
My second innovation, Epione, Prescription opioid addiction today, is a national health crisis and around 50,000 people die each year in the United States because of overdose. I was inspired by the experience of a family friend who started with painkillers, after a car accident, but soon became addicted to them. Neither the patient nor the physician had a way of detecting if a painkiller is causing addiction. The current approaches of addiction diagnosis are inadequate as they are based on self-assessment, and psychological evaluations. There is a need for a simple and reliable way to diagnose prescription opioid addiction, before it becomes a problem. Epione diagnoses prescription opioid addiction before it’s too late using the ELISA based protein detection method. After a user inserts a bodily fluid sample, Epione uses the protein expression from the mu opioid receptor gene to find out if a patient is at the onset of addiction. The device itself uses the standard colorimetry process in order to identify the addiction status of a patient. All the results are displayed on a custom-built mobile phone app which shows you the status of addiction in a user-friendly scale and includes action items including a map of the nearest addiction center.
And my third innovation, Kindly. I am taught to always be kind and considerate to everybody. However, I found that the world around me was not always like that. I have changed schools 7 times in the last 11 years, due to our family’s move. Cyberbullying has always been an immense fear of mine whenever I moved schools. I know it is also true for many others. Hence I decided to tackle this problem. Kindly is an Artificial-Intelligence based service to detect and prevent cyberbullying at an early stage. It uses the latest developments in Machine Learning and NLU/NLP in order to identify words and phrases that could be considered bullying. The service can be seamlessly invoked to a variety of different front ends. For example, I have created a standalone app and browser extension. The current solutions in the market, while effective, are limited in their capabilities since many are based on a fixed bank of words when in reality, the vocabulary and terminology used are constantly evolving. Kindly’s self-learning service adapts to this by learning about the latest emojis, memes, and slang used. Along with this, Kindly attempts to be non-punitive by allowing users the option to rephrase or edit their message.
3. 2020 has been quite a year for innovators and entrepreneurs, but you still moved forward with your innovations and pursued your dreams. What have been your greatest accomplishments this year, and any challenges your faced as an inventor?
I think the need for science and believing in science is slowly gaining respect across the world after the pandemic this year. We have a lot to do, but the pandemic has taught us to think, act and be different. Things we took for granted such as education in classrooms, travel, food availability are being challenged now and every sector is doing their best to adapt and adopt. The world has come together like never before and we need to look at the positivity to move forward.
I am no exception. I had to stop going to my research labs due to the virus. I had started Kindly as a team project for a certain challenge. The team helped me with initial research talking to experts, but priorities changed for them and I continued after receiving a grant. The idea came because of the fact that I have changed school several schools and it is easy to get cyberbullied. Making it a global service rather than work on a bank of words that other solutions do today, seemed to the best way. We teens evolve in our language including usage of non-verbals such as emojis and memes. My service tries to fill the unique need for a constantly evolving, self-learning service that understands the moods and sentiments to identify cyberbullying attempts. It can be involved from any social media platform and nobody has to depend on an app or certain browser. To help with the adoption, I have developed a sample mobile app, and an browser extension, both of which were launched in May ‘20.
I also focused my attention on sharing my process with others in a hope that others might benefit from it and there is a broader ecosystem of innovators. I have conducted several innovation workshops and wrote a book so my process can be adopted by teachers, students and educators across the globe. I have reached out to about 35000 students across 4 continents and have many more planned in the next few months. I wouldn’t have reached out to so many students if not for the pandemic and the convenience of people to attend sessions online. I recognize there is an inequality in education. Some schools barely have internet access while others have 3D printing labs. My innovation workshops are a small step in sharing with rural schools and other underprivileged schools that you can start anywhere, start with a simple idea and reach out to mentors who may provide you more access to materials and experts. You need not be limited to what the school provides. If you have a phone and internet connection, there is no excuse to not reach out or say that we were not given a fair chance.
4. Describe that feeling you get when you pursue an innovation. As the platform for women dreamers, we ask, what is your next big dream as an innovator?
The creativity that flows and an “aha” moment when you think this is going to work is my favorite part. The toughest part is when I reach out to people who have gone through the problem to understand it from their perspective. It makes me realize that many of us are very privileged and we have taken things for granted such as clean drinking water, internet access, and have contributed to contamination of natural resources.However, I derive immense joy when I find that my message as inspired others to create their own solutions solving problems big and small.