Meet the 11-year-old inventor working

to improve lead water testing

By Amanda Paulson, Christian Science Monitor on 12.04.17
Word Count 1,285
Level MAX

Gitanjali Rao, 11, shows her "Tethys" device at the STEM School Highlands Ranch on November 7, 2017, in Highlands Ranch,
Colorado. Inspired by the Flint, Michigan, water crisis, Gitanjali has been named America's Top Young Scientist after she
developed a device that quickly detects lead levels in water. Photo by: Kathryn Scott/The Denver Post via Getty Images

HIGHLANDS RANCH, COLO. — In many ways, Gitanjali Rao is a typical 11-year-old: energetic
and chatty, with a smile that lights up her face. She can also talk easily about carbon nanotubes,
Arduino processors, the reactions between lead acetate and chloride, and how to think through a
long-term design process – from conceptualization to experimentation and building. Plus, she’s
driven to come up with real solutions to big problems.

Last month, Gitanjali earned the top prize at the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist
Challenge after she presented her invention – a portable device that can test for lead in water – to
a panel of scientists and school administrators from around the country. The water crisis in Flint,
Michigan, spurred her work.

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“What really stands out about Gitanjali is how she exudes passion for making a difference
through her innovation,” says Kathleen Shafer, a 3M research specialist in plastics technologies
who was paired with Gitanjali over the summer as a mentor. “It was obvious from the first moment
I met her,” says Shafer, who made her comments in an email interview.

For Gitanjali, coming up with an innovative solution is not a new thing – and it’s the reason
science is her favorite subject.

“Science allows me to look at approaches to solve the real-world problems out there,” she says in
an interview at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado, where she’s currently a seventh-
grader.

Not all her ideas have been as practical as the water-testing device. There was her concept, back
in second grade, for an automated chair that went underground to save on space. A year ago,
she entered the Discovery competition with a snakebite detection device.

This time around, Gitanjali focused on water testing as she learned more about the situation in
Flint, Michigan, – which she first read about as a 9-year-old – and found out how limited the
options were for people to determine if their water was contaminated.

“I hadn’t thought about creating a device until I saw my parents try to test for lead in our water,”
Gitanjali says. “I realized it wasn’t a very reliable process, since they were using test strips.”
Some strips labeled their water as safe and others showed that lead was present. The more
accurate option – collecting samples and sending them in for analysis – was both expensive and
time-consuming.

“I wanted to do something to change this not only for my parents, but for the residents of Flint and
places like Flint around the world,” says Gitanjali, who lights up with animation and speaks with
remarkable poise as she describes the process she went through.

She started with brainstorming. She quickly realized that her initial idea – coming up with a way to
remove lead from water, possibly by finding a bacterium that could remove it – wasn’t very
practical and might introduce other hazardous chemicals into water. She stumbled onto the idea
of carbon nanotube sensors – chemical sensors at the atomic scale – after reading about them on
an MIT website in an article about how useful they are for detecting hazardous gases. When
certain ions are introduced into the carbon nanotubes to react with those gases, Gitanjali
explains, the molecules in the gases combine with the introduced ion to form compounds, which
can then be tested.

The article got Gitanjali thinking: Why couldn’t she use the same idea to test for lead in water?
She started researching carbon nanotubes as well as the properties of lead and what sort of
chemical would react with it. She also considered options – and settled on an Arduino processor –
to receive and transmit the data.

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Gitanjali then moved from brainstorming to experimentation. She decided on lead acetate as the
most common compound of lead found in water and chloride as the ion she would introduce to
react with the lead acetate. Also, she chose to work with “buckypaper,” a thin sheet made from
carbon nanotubes that she could fold, cut, and manipulate. Gitanjali then moved to the prototype
development phase to bring it all together.

Named For A Greek Goddess

The result: Tethys, named for the Greek goddess of fresh water. It’s a small blue housing
(Gitanjali built it using her school’s 3-D printer) with computer chips and a battery inside, a
disposable cartridge that can be dipped in water, and a Bluetooth device that transmits the data
to a phone. A free app (which Gitanjali designed with support from her computer science teacher)
gives instant results.

“I’m so impressed with her. Every time I meet with her, she’s already 10 steps ahead,” says Simi
Basu, the computer science teacher, who says she pushed Gitanjali to simplify the app and make
it user-friendly. “The best thing I love about her: She’s not afraid of failure at all.”

That’s what Gitanjali says she emphasizes most to other children who might want to invent or
innovate – that failure is part of the process.

“I always tell everybody who is interested in science and wants to create a device but is worried it
won’t work, to not be afraid, to try,” she says. “Failure is just another step to success.”

Roadblocks Along The Way

In the course of developing Tethys, Gitanjali hit numerous roadblocks – including the fact that her
family moved cross-country from Tennessee to Colorado. Arriving in Colorado over the summer,
Gitanjali had been selected as one of the competition’s 10 finalists, but had no idea where she
could do tests and experiments involving hazardous chemicals. She emailed a chemistry teacher
at her new school, a science-focused K-12 charter school, and was told she was welcome to use
the school’s labs.

Shafer, her 3M mentor, also helped – not just with developing the device, but also with winnowing
her presentation down to five minutes, which Gitanjali says was a challenge. (She ultimately cut
52 slides down to 19 and managed to convey a massive amount of complicated material in five
minutes through a clear – but lightning-fast – delivery.)

Shafer notes that she’s a big fan of competitions like this one for the outlet they give students to
work on what they’re interested in and to apply skills in a real-world setting. Such competitions
also make connections between children and working scientists – perhaps allowing students to
envision what a career could look like and see that those scientists aren’t one-dimensional. “I
think we sometimes underestimate the power of simply ‘opening the door,’” Shafer says.

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Guiding Lights

Gitanjali is quick to credit not only Shafer and Basu with helping her, but also her parents, who
she says have constantly supported and encouraged her “crazy ideas.” And there’s the scientist
who is her inspiration: Marie Curie. Gitanjali loves that Curie discovered two new elements for the
periodic table and also “had the courage to perform hazardous experiments” at a time when there
were significant risks to doing so.

Along with the honor of winning the competition, which is open to fifth- to eighth-graders, Gitanjali
received a check for $25,000, which she plans to use to further develop her device and get
production started (her goal is for it to be commercially available within a year). She also wants to
donate to the Children’s Kindness Network (an organization that she volunteers for) and save for
college.

She already has big plans for the future: studying epidemiology and genetics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. And when she’s not experimenting or
inventing, Gitanjali loves to fence, swim, bake, and play three instruments – piano, bass guitar
and clarinet.

But she’s already thought of the next challenge she wants to try to solve: the growing problem of
adolescent depression. And she has a working concept for what she wants to create (which may
involve gene editing and measuring levels of serotonin) – a “happiness detector.”

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