Contaminated water, drug addiction, cyberbullying.

Headline after chyron after special report, the overwhelm is understandable and problematic.

We just cannot afford to peter out, and that's why we need the energy of people like Gitanjali Rao, who might just be the CTO of the future.

Thanks to two inventive schools, mentors in labs across the country, an Internet connection, and two parents who couldn't wait to see what their kids could figure out on their own, we have a next-generation innovator who can't stop trying to fix things from opioid addiction to lead in the water.

I'm Kelly Corrigan, this is "Tell Me More," and here is my conversation with innovator, empath, and habitual problem solver Gitanjali Rao.

♪ Hello.

Hi!

How are you?

Good.

How are you?

Good.

Thanks for coming all the way to New York.

Thanks for having me.

Corrigan: So this season has a theme-- what does it take to make it in America today-- and in researching that, we started thinking about the most basic stuff like water, and that took us to Flint, Michigan, and that took us to an 11-year-old who was cold calling chemistry professors.

The story broke in 2014.

You were 9.

Do you remember first hearing about it?

I do.

Actually, it was, you know, a day where my entire family was at the dinner table and the news was playing in the background, and it was just so foreign to me that, like, the concept of lead being in drinking water, especially because I had grown up with this privilege and opportunity to have clean drinking water ever since I was born, right?

It was so uncommon to me that there were thousands and thousands of kids my age in Flint, Michigan, in the United States, drinking a poison every single day that caused lifelong damage to, like, their mental capacity, their vital organs, and just the way they normally grow.

It was unfair to me from the beginning, and I knew I wanted to do something about it, regardless of what that was.

And what did you come up with?

So I created a device called Tethys, which is named after the Greek goddess of freshwater.

It detects for lead in drinking water faster and cheaper than current tools out there today, and it's built on carbon nanotube sensors, and it sends all the data to your mobile phone on an app that I created, which then also allows you to upload your results so you can see a heatmap of locations with more lead levels and less lead levels.

So it's completely crowdsourced.

What had you done before that day that made you think "I should get involved in the solution of this problem"?

I actually didn't start developing my device until I was 11 because it took me a solid two years to, you know, research, like, come up with ideas.

I always looked at things in a scientific way, and I'd always done it since I was 4 or 5 years old.

I kind of just didn't know how to start.

My initial couple of ideas were actually ways to completely remove lead out of water, so I was looking at lead-eating bacteria and parasites that I could basically release into oceans, which was an awful idea.

Highly don't recommend it.

How any awful ideas did you have on the way to your device?

Tons.

Tons, and I think that's, like, what people don't realize is I had to teach myself how to stop stigmatizing failure.

I had terrible ideas.

Especially as, like, a 10-year-old, no one can expect you to have the most incredible ideas in the world, and I had to really teach myself that it's OK to mess up and it's OK to come up with more than one idea.

So what is "old bananas regularly belong in cake"?

So you did read my book.

I did.

So that's my little mnemonic for my 5-step process towards innovation, which is observe, brainstorm, research, build, and communicate, and that's also a really good baking tip.

So let's go back, and let's go through that.

So one of the other devices that I've created is a device called Epione, named after the Greek goddess of soothing of pain.

I hope you're catching on to a theme here.

I got it.

Yeah.

Basically, it's the first ever clinical tool to diagnose for addiction, so... and it's particularly around opioids.

Yeah.

Prescription opioids specifically, too.

There's a gene in all of our bodies called the Mu opioid receptor, and apparently-- through research and through literature, I found out that it has indications of addictive behavior through the amount of protein it produces, and so I identified a correlation and created a device that you're able to take a blood sample, add antibodies and enzymes, and essentially measure it to basically see how "addicted" you are based on a protein amount, and the goal for this is something that a physician would use to basically do a screening before anyone is prescribed a drug and be like, "Hey, before I prescribe you anything else, "I'm gonna do this really quick screening "to make sure you're already previously not on anything or addicted to anything," but also because this protein production is directly correlated to an addiction status, it also helps you look at rehabilitation center progress, and so when you're at rehab, you're able to see, OK, your protein production levels are going down.

Clearly you're significantly less addicted than before, and so-- So it's quantifying something that hasn't been quantified before.

Yeah, not at all, and I think the indications were there and the research had been done, but no one had taken the time to create a device out of it.

Why was that on your mind?

Personally, one of our family friends got into a car accident, and by the time they knew about the addiction to something like fentanyl, it was too late to do anything about it, and that--in 2020, the opioid addiction was hitting its peak, right, and especially with thousands and thousands of teenagers across the world who were facing an addiction just because they didn't know what they were intaking into their body, and I did an internship for the Colorado Department of Law under the Opioid Response Program, and it was, you know, a very similar thing with them, too, is they were talking about how the biggest gap is diagnosis.

The only way we're able to diagnose for opioid addiction is through psychological, like, assessments, like those, like, surveys you get at the doctor's office that any addict is gonna end up lying on...

Right.

and so I wanted to come up with a clinical, like, proven, accurate tool to help diagnose for addiction because I think that's really how it should be.

After you start digging around and try to find a solution for something that's bothering you, how do you scale it so that it can become a part of our systematic processes?

Yeah.

The first and foremost is I always apply for a patent with any solution.

So my lead detection tool is now a patented solution, but then on top of that, I take the time to recognize what else out there in the market is similar.

What type of approvals did those types of things get, as well?

So with my opioid addiction stuff, obviously you can't just put that out there.

It's still at a very basic research stage, but you'd have to look at FDA approvals, and you'd have to look at ways in which you can combine it with other solutions and implement these in physicians' offices, as well.

I also created another solution called Kindly, which is an anti-cyberbullying tool.

I partnered with UNICEF to help me build it and turn it into a digital public good under their Office of Innovation so I could bring it to life.

How does it work?

So Kindly is based on artificial intelligence, which has been the dreaded word for so long, but all the positives of it, and specifically natural language understanding and processing.

So you use spell check, I'm assuming.

Yes.

So I like to say it's the spell check of cyberbullying, and so when you type in words or phrases into a text message or e-mail, it's able to underline it, but it doesn't stop you from sending anything, and it doesn't block anything either, and so that makes it really, really easy for you to basically give you the chance to reevaluate what you're sending, and I always like to say it was created by a teenager for a teenager.

It's actually leveraged off of a study that I read that it says it only takes 7 seconds for a teenager to want to unsend something that they sent.

And so if you give them those 7 seconds and possibly even more, you know, maybe that stops another suicide in the future, maybe that stops a case of someone else getting bullied.

We have a thing at "Tell Me More" called Plus One, where we want to constantly be drawing out the connection between the people in your life along the way and what each one of us is able to achieve and contribute.

Who is your Plus One?

So my Plus One is Ms. Jennifer Stockdale.

She was, like, one of my biggest mentors from day one.

She told me that I was gonna change the world someday, and she's followed my journey ever since.

Ms. Stockdale was, like, one of the first people when I was in first or second grade-- it was the first competition I'd ever applied to, which was a writing competition, and I wrote a book report about "Ella Enchanted"... Ha ha ha!

and I talked about how "Ella Enchanted" defined my life goals and my careers and everything positive about "Ella Enchanted," and I won second place in this writing competition and won, like, a $25 gift card, and I had never been more excited, and Ms. Stockdale was the organizer of this competition, but, you know, she was much, much more than that to me.

She gave me my first college flag, my MIT flag that's still hanging in my room, when I was in sixth grade, and she really, really pushed me through there.

So when we think about what it takes to make it in America, our mind keeps drifting back to education and the Ms. Stockdales of the world.

If you could be Ellen Enchanted and put whatever you want into every K-12 school, what would you do?

I think I would mandate almost, like, a problem-solving curriculum.

We've spent the past hundred years with the same education system, and it took us the whole pandemic to even think about going online and offering opportunities like remote learning to Third World countries and people who have significantly less opportunities than we do in the United States, and so a big thing is mandating this idea of rooting everything in empathy in impact and talking about problem-solving and creativity in school.

How does a habit of empathy help you solve problems?

It helps me always think of the bigger picture.

This is why I'm doing what I'm doing.

This is why I'm learning so much.

This is why I, like, try and gain different skillsets.

This is why I spend so much time in a lab is by realizing that if no one else is going to take that first step, I need to take that first step.

I had a lot of people ask me, "Oh, I thought you were in Flint, Michigan.

"I thought you lived there.

"I thought you were dealing with this crisis.

"What made you living all the way in Colorado want to do something about this?"

And I really just think it was that bigger sense of motivation, empathy, and putting myself in these people's shoes and recognizing how truly deeply unfair it is, and the second we're able to kind of allow that empathy to be in every single student and almost teach them how important it is to look at the world's problems and recognize it as some of their own, as one big community, that's what's gonna help us take that next step.

Mm-hmm.

It sort of goes to sustaining your motivation over time, and so there's this idea of keeping your why super present that comes through in your work, and it also cuts against something that Matthew Desmond, who's also been a part of this series, said, which is, like, it can be cool to be fatalistic and be, like, "Hey, man.

Like, this ship's sinking.

It's just about being me now."

Yeah.

Do you feel that in your peers?

I mean, absolutely.

I think at times there's students who are always like "Why is there any point in doing anything "anymore if the world is, you know, going to hell anyway basically?"

Like, you know, you turn on the news every day, and it's, like, a combination of, like, war, like, gun violence, and it's crazy to kind of think about, you know, "This is the world that we're growing up in.

Why is there any point in doing anything?"

But I really think it's important to bring in that optimistic attitude of our generation is going to change the world's problems, and, you know, we're able to make a difference, and we're able to kind of take those next steps, and we're able to stand on the shoulders of giants before us, who have done incredible research, and look at ways in which we can build our country upwards and help us recognize how much more there is going for this world, so... Yeah.

I mean, a part of what "Tell Me More" is here to do is to circulate the good news and to profile people like you who are doing amazing stuff to remind all of us that, like, it's still happening.

There's still forward movement.

Yeah.

Who do you admire?

Whose shoulders are you standing on?

One of my biggest mentors and role models is Dr. Pardis Sabeti.

She's from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and I did research there this past summer.

Her lab is the one that initially sequenced the Ebola virus, but she has been an incredible example of someone who has pushed through every wall to be where she is today.

You know, one day, I aspire to be like her.

I guess another big role model of mine is actually Malala.

Her work is incredible to me, and I think another big part of why I look up to her is because she's one of the people who empowered me to work on activism in addition to my own research.

You have done such a nice job of educating others, and tell us about your workshop.

Yeah.

So it goes anywhere from 30 minutes to a semester long of working with schools and organizations anywhere from 5 to 500 kids, anywhere from K-12.

They're really, really tailored towards the audience that I'm working with, but the only thing in common is that every student, regardless of how long the workshop is, comes up with an idea, as well as they have a process that they can use to bring it into the real world.

Technology-centric ideas to completely activism-based to art-based to music to history.

Incredible ways to solve problems that don't all center around science.

Every single one of these students have that drive to solve problems, all 75,000 of them, and hopefully there's 75,000 new budding ideas across the world that are just waiting to be brought to life.

Have any of the schools that you've been through done a particularly impressive job of blending new technologies into methods of learning?

I have a very biased answer to this because I go to a STEM school.

What I've learned more in our school and what we've done differently is looking at this interdisciplinary approach towards not only solving problems but even doing assignments, right?

There's times you're mixing math and history and all these weird subjects that you wouldn't think to put together.

We mandate computer science and engineering in middle school as, like, classes that we should take.

Like, I learned Python in seventh grade because my school offered it.

I was taking apart computers freshman year of high school and putting them back together, and so my school has done a phenomenal job at really bringing that passion to life, and I think that's why a lot of people, once they leave and once they graduate from STEM, they're able to understand that, "Oh, this is exactly what I want to do in the real world."

Just because we've been exposed to the world at an extremely young age and we're able to kind of make our way out of that.

Do you have a strong sense that maybe we're waiting way too long to take a kid and their mind seriously?

I think we spend more time kind of treating kids as a novelty act rather than taking their ideas and bringing them to life and taking them seriously.

There will be thousands and thousands of companies across the world who have "youth boards" or will have a student be in their meetings, but, you know, they'll always encourage us to bring a chair to the table, but it doesn't matter unless that chair is being taken seriously.

It doesn't matter if, you know, a youth is involved just because they want to say a youth is involved.

It really needs to have that connection.

We need to harness the ingenuity that youth bring to the playing field.

And it's our future.

Like, our generation is gonna solve the world's problems.

Our generation is facing these problems right now.

We know the solutions we want.

We know the problems we're seeing, and you can't just wait around and let these problems solve themselves.

Do you ever feel mad at previous generations?

Not as much as people think I do because I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my mentors across the way who were doing incredible research, right?

And neither would any other student with any other idea, right?

We can't blame our previous generations.

That's not the way the world should work.

We need to just work together in a positive manner, and I think we are absolutely making progress.

How could we change science education so that there would be more people like you?

Encouraging students to take risks and really fostering that idea of changing the world for the better and taking those risks.

Does getting grades seem at odds with the kind of curriculum and learning environment that we need to make for more innovative thinkers?

I don't think grades are gonna do anything.

Yes.

It's regulation that we need to be able to measure student success, but I think where that comes from is real hard work and commitment being shown rather than just an A on a math test, and maybe this is me being salty because I was never really that good at calculus, but I think that's really what matters.

Where would you be without a laptop and an Internet connection?

Oh, see, that's always hard for me to think about because I've had the opportunity to grow up in such a privileged community that, like, even this question is making me, like, introspect my life, but definitely not where I am today.

I think hopefully I'm able to give every student that opportunity or most students that opportunity that I did.

I had the opportunity to work with the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya and fundraise about $91,000 for them to fund laptops, iPads, an Internet connection, and basic makerspace, run workshops with them on how to build apps.

That's, like, something I hope to do with even more communities out there.

You talk about in your book thinking about the problem in terms of its worth, and then when you look at your career, how do you decide where you can have the most impact?

Like, what's--what are the 5 things that you might possibly do as an adult?

I think one thing I'd definitely like to do is help solve the education inequality crisis in some way, whether that's gender, race, age, anything of the sort, kind of make my mark on that.

Second thing is I'd like to contribute to teenage mental health in some format.

I think that's a big problem that is still a taboo.

Ideally, I'd like to look at the crossover between genetics and artificial intelligence.

I think there's a lot of power there for something to happen.

Ideally, I'd like to start a biotech company kind of housing this world of sustainability.

So using genetic engineering for sustainability purposes, and I think that goes hand in hand with kind of a fifth one, which is helping solve contamination of our natural resources and looking at ways in which we're able to take steps towards preventing climate change from getting worse in the future, and I guess if I had to add a sixth one-- sneak another one in here just because I can, but I'd ideally like to start up schools in different countries that kind of carry on my mission of problem-solving, so...

When somebody like Elizabeth Holmes is proven to be a total fraud, how does that disrupt our progress?

How does that introduce new skepticism?

What's the impact?

For one, I get backlash when I wear black turtlenecks now, so... Ha ha ha!

I wear them on purpose.

Well done, you.

Take it back.

If you can't tell.

I think that's, like, a big thing that I had to realize is that she's just one example of the entire biotech world.

Now, did she, you know, leave a mark on it and a rather bad one?

Yes, but I think that's not something we can't recover from, right?

There have been multiple times where my work's been compared to her work, especially with my opioid addiction work, as well.

You're taking a blood sample.

You're measuring for opiate addiction.

Sounds eerily similar to something else we know, but I think one of the biggest factors for me when it goes into problem-solving is a sense of honesty and humility and keeping ideas prototypes when they need to be prototypes and taking them out there when you really see potential in them, and so, yes, it makes it difficult to kind of prove yourself in the biotech world as it is, especially as a female, but it's just one example of what biotech really means, right?

And so it's something that's always able to come back.

Has America been a great place for you to grow up?

I'm gonna say yes, and I think there's definitely, like-- there's always the negatives, but I think the more you dwell on the negatives, the more you lose the positives.

I've had the opportunity to grow with Internet access, with a laptop, with a supportive family, with incredible friends, and with opportunities that I've had in front of me lined up that I probably wouldn't have anywhere else.

And people like Ms. Stockdale.

Yes, absolutely.

Mentors.

I mean, a great teacher will take you a pretty long way.

Yeah.

Talk about mentors.

Yeah.

So I've had a lot of mentors across the journey, and I think-- I always make a request at the end of my speeches to whoever I'm working with, whichever organization.

It's always to seek mentorship and ask your mentor to mentor you in the areas that you're passionate about.

Something that, like, I always struggled with, was asking for help at a young age and realizing that it was OK to make mistakes and ask for help, and so it took me so many mentors across the way, people who were signing forms for me to get into labs at the age of 11 years old, to realize that, OK, it is OK to ask questions and ask for help because I was always the type of person that wanted to do everything by myself.

Mentorship was absolutely life-changing for making me the person who I am today.

There's a question that keeps coming up across this season about the relationship between gumption or personal agency, which I would rate you extremely high, circumstance or good luck, which I would also rate you extremely high-- educated parents, people who are invested in you.

They challenged you.

They gave you tools and methods and encouragement.

Yeah.

And then intervention, which is to say some policy that reached out and touched you.

You referred to charter schools, which is clearly, like, something that changed the trajectory of your life.

Are there other sort of social structures or policies that you would credit to some degree with where you've ended up?

Growing up in the United States, it's very difficult to be taken seriously for your gender, your race, and your age.

I'm shattering every glass wall there is in the field of STEM.

Pow, pow, pow!

Yeah.

And it's--and it's, like, terrifying in ways, but I think, you know, being accepted in this society was a big thing for me, as well.

Like, both of my parents were born and raised in India and moved to America, you know, a couple of years before I was born with no idea what this country really was.

My grandfather on my dad's side was an orphan and raised, you know, his two brothers by himself, and my--you know, my dad always likes to tell me it's insane how we went from, like, in two generations from, you know, my grandfather, who was making money for himself and his younger brother and his older brother, to me, and now I'm at MIT, and ,like, that was, like, a big, you know, motivating factor for me to realize that, like, I'm so glad that I've grown up in a country where I'm accepted for who I am.

I'm seeing people from so many different races, so many different sexualities, so many different backgrounds and so many different genders kind of coming together for one common goal, and that's to make the world a better place.

You have done a lot of things in your life, but are you ready for the "Tell Me More" speed round?

Absolutely First concert?

Have you been to a concert?

No.

I've--I've never been to a concert.

I'm gonna take you to one.

What do you want to see?

No, don't even worry.

My first one is gonna be Taylor Swift, and it's gonna be the best concert of my life.

Yeah.

I'm so excited.

What's the last book that blew you away?

I liked "The Code Breaker."

Huge, huge inspiration to me, and I really like "The Sun is Also a Star," which is, like, a coming of age, like, novel.

Who is your favorite celebrity crush?

Ooh!

I would say Tom Holland.

OK. Just because Spider-Man.

what is your go-to mantra for hard times?

It's a Einstein quote.

It's "It's not that I'm smart.

It's just that I stay with the problem longer."

If you could pass one law or overturn one Supreme Court case.

To lower the voting age.

I think it's important to take into consideration kids' ideas and think even going down to, like, 16 even, so...

If your mother, who I just met, wrote a book about you, what would it be called?

I asked her how to answer this question, and she there was no hesitation.

She goes "The Trials and Tribulations of a High-maintenance Child."

There was--there was no hesitation whatsoever.

She said it almost immediately, and I was like, "What?

OK." If you could say 4 words to anyone, who would you address, and what would you say?

I would say to, like, all the girls-- Can I say 5 words?

Sure.

I don't have 4.

I would say don't apologize for being you to every girl out there.

Like, I know this sounds, like, really cliché, but, like, I wish someone had told me that, so... You are a breath of fresh air.

Thank you.

I'm so happy to know you.

I'm on Team Gitanjali forever.

Tell me how Taylor Swift goes.

Oh, absolutely.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Of course.

Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Gitanjali Rao.

Number one, it's time to change the definition of failure.

Number two, maybe we should let every kid in America take a computer apart and try to put it back together again.

Number 3, if you have an opportunity to mentor, do it, and number 4, maybe the easiest way to create a bigger highway for more inventors is to make sure everyone has an Internet connection.

♪ ♪ ♪