Indian-American teen becomes TIME’s Kid of the Year | Fusion - WeRIndia

15-year-old Gitanjali Rao, an Indian-American girl from Colorado, US, has been named the first-ever Kid of the Year by TIME Magazine.

She was chosen from 5,000 nominees for her astounding work and using technology to address various issues like contaminated drinking water, opioid addiction etc.

Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie interviewed her virtually for being chosen as the first-ever Kid of the Year from thousands of nominees.

Gitanjali Rao has been aspiring to be a scientist since a very young age, to bring about social changes. When she told her parents that she wanted to research carbon nanotube sensor technology at the age of 10 years, they were surprised.

This young innovator won Discovery Education 3M Scientist Challenge at the age of 11 years. Besides, her innovations fetched her reputation. Forbes listed her name in 30 Under 30 for her remarkable innovations.

In addition to that, she won the President’s Environmental Youth Award in 2018.

She developed many mobile applications and designed devices. One such application is Tethys that measures the contamination levels of lead in water using carbon nanotubes.

Her latest discovery is an app, Kindly. Kindly uses artificial-­intelligence technology to identify cyberbullying at an early stage.

Currently, Rao is working on designing a product to diagnose prescription-­opioid addiction using protein production of the mu-opioid receptor gene.

She says that anyone can become a scientist. There is no discrepancy like age, gender, skin colour etc. The main thing is that one should have an interest in science and knowledge on using technology. They should also have to research till they get the desired results.

She regularly follows MIT Tech Review. As Genetics is her favourite subject, she aims to pursue higher education in genetics and epidemiology from MIT.

Image Credit: Gitanjali Rao on Twitter

Image Reference: https://twitter.com/gitanjaliarao