Gitanjali Rao: The 15-year-old inventor and coder breaking stereotypes in STEM

4 days ago

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At 15, Gitanjali Rao isn’t your archetypal scientist, but her avidity for facts and her problem-solving approach puts her in line with some of the most brilliant thinkers of our time. “I always start with problems I see in society and those that are personal to me,” says Colorado-based Rao, who founded Kindly, an anti-cyberbullying app, after a first-hand experience with bullying.

Rao is a fan of Greek mythology and named her bubblegum-pink device which diagnoses early stages of addiction to morphine Epione, after the goddess of recovery. It came to her after seeing a relative go through drug dependency. Another blue apparatus she christened Tethys, after the Greek water goddess, which detects lead in water and was created after Michigan’s Flint water crisis. It won her the moniker America’s Top Young Scientist, a merit she outdoes every year—from the Forbes 30 Under 30 List (2019) to the TIME Kid of the Year (2020) and now being our youngest awardee at Women Of The Year 2021. Rao’s maturity is evident when she says, “A lot of people tell me that I can’t do what I’m doing because of how old I am or because of the way I look.” It’s not new. Throughout history, women-led ideas have been sidelined. But Rao is from a newer generation of scientists: “We Gen-Zers are not restricted with a box around our head. We’re not afraid to think big and think back to reality,” she says, as she continues to write books, hosts workshops for young innovator and hopes for better representation of women in STEM.

Gitanjali Rao won the Spotlight Of The Year award at Vogue Women Of The Year 2021