NEW YORK: A teenage scientist and inventor has been named as Time magazine’s first “kid of the year”.
Gitanjali Rao, aged 15 from Denver, Colorado, has invented new technologies across a range of fields, including a device that can identify lead in drinking water.
She has also developed an app and Chrome extension that uses artificial intelligence to detect cyberbullying. She said she hoped she could inspire others to dream up ideas to “solve the world’s problems”.
Gitanjali was chosen from a field of 5,000 US-based nominees, which was narrowed down to five finalists by a committee of young people alongside comedian Trevor Noah.
She and the other four finalists will be honoured in a TV special next Friday. “If I can do it, you can do it, and anyone can do it,” she said.
Introducing the first-ever Kid of the Year, Gitanjali Rao https://t.co/Hvgu3GLoNs pic.twitter.com/4zORbRiGMU
— TIME (@TIME) December 3, 2020
In an interview with actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie, Gitanjali said: “I don’t look like your typical scientist. Everything I see on TV is that it’s an older, usually white, man as a scientist.
“My goal has really shifted not only from creating my own devices to solve the world’s problems, but inspiring others to do the same as well. Because, from personal experience, it’s not easy when you don’t see anyone else like you.,” she said.
Rao said there are many issues that need to be solved. “Our generation is facing so many problems that we’ve never seen before. But then at the same time we’re facing old problems that still exist,” she said.
“Like, we’re sitting here in the middle of a new global pandemic, and we’re also like still facing human-rights issues. There are problems that we did not create but that we now have to solve, like climate change and cyberbullying with the introduction of technology.”
