Gitanjali Rao who is just 11 years old from Colorado, a seventh
The grader has invented a device that spots lead levels in water much faster than any other devices available in the market. She has won $25000 for this
invention and has been named “America’s Top Young Scientist.”
This device has been named Tethys which has the capacity to detects lead
levels in water with Carbon Nanotube Sensors. In an incident, the lead was detected in Flint river which apparently killed 12 people with Legionnaires disease a type of pneumonia.
She was disheartened to see the number of people affected by lead contamination in water and she took an initiative to invent this device to change this. Gitanjali parents are engineers and she got the inspiration from her parents to test lead levels of the waters in their home and she realized the process can be complicated. But with their parents and teachers help she has used the technique to detect lead.
She was among the ten finalists of the 2017 discovery 3M young scientist
challenge. She presented the device in Minnesota to all the judges present
there and won the Grand prize.