11-year-old girl wins $25,000 science prize for creating a cheap device to test drinking water for poison
Gitanjali Rao, a seventh grader from Colorado, has been awarded the title of "America's top young scientist" for designing a compact device to detect lead in drinking water, which she believes can be faster and cheaper than other current methods.
The 11-year-old's invention was inspired by the water crisis in
Flint, Michigan, where cost-cutting measures led to tainted drinking
water that contained lead and other toxins. It also won her a $25,000
prize, for which Rao already has plans: "I plan to use most of it in developing my device further so that it can be commercially available soon," she said
Rao who attends the STEM School in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, originally
submitted the idea to the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist
Challenge, an annual youth science and engineering competition for
middle school students in the US, inaugurated in 2008. She was awarded a
3-month mentorship with Kathleen Shafer, a research specialist who
develops new plastics technologies: "Gitanjali's concept was at a very
early stage at the beginning of our mentorship. She had thought of this
idea earlier this year, only a few weeks before the submission
deadline," Shafer said.
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