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2 Indian American Teens Win Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes for Making a Difference

2 Indian American Teens Win Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes for Making a Difference

  • Gitanjali Rao, 15 of Colorado, and Adarsh Ambati, 16, of California were among 25 young leaders.

Indian American teens Gitanjali Rao and Adarsh Ambati are among the winners of the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, which recognizes inspiring, public-spirited young people. Established in 2001 by author T. A. Barron, the Barron Prize is a nonprofit organization annually honoring 25 outstanding young leaders ages 8 to 18 who have made a significant positive difference in people’s lives, their communities, and the environment. Fifteen top winners are each awarded $10,000 to support their service work or higher education.

This year’s Barron Prize winners include those who are helping the hungry, the homeless, and people with disabilities; promoting STEM education; protecting wildlife; and raising awareness and funds for important environmental issues

“During a most difficult time in our lives, these outstanding young people rose to the challenge of helping others with creativity, compassion, and perseverance,” says T. A. Barron. “By honoring and supporting these young heroes, we hope to inspire many others.”

Rao, 15, of Lone Tree, Colorado, is an inventor, young scientist, and advocate for STEM who conducts workshops for students around the world to support them in creating solutions to pressing problems. Time magazine’s first-ever ‘Kid of the Year,’ Rao was named by the National Alliance for Public Charter School’s ’30 Under 30 Charter School Changemakers’ for using her talent and platform to make the world better.

Rao was featured in an episode of Marvel’s Hero Project, “Genius Gitanjali.” The episode focused on her work inventing an app that detects lead in drinking water, inspired by a trip with her family to India and the Flint Water Crisis. which followed her work developing an app that detects lead in drinking water. Her work was inspired by a trip with her family to India and the Flint water crisis.

She went on to combat another significant problem for her generation—cyberbullying. Her app, Kindly, uses artificial intelligence to detect and combat cyberbullying in its early stages. If that wasn’t enough, Rao also dedicates her time to running innovation workshops to mentor fellow students. To date, she has mentored more than 45,000 students across 4 continents and continues to pay it forward. This app developer and anti-cyber-bullying advocate attends STEM School Highlands Ranch in Littleton, Colorado.

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Ambati, age 16, of California, founded Green Environment Initiatives to design solutions for environmental crises and to provide STEM education for underserved students. A rising senior at Archbishop Mitty High School, Ambati is interested in environmental science, biology, and computer science. He loves gardening and growing plants, especially succulents which he sells through his STEM education organization, Gro-STEMs.

Whenever he finds time, he likes to play the flute and read comics. He ultimately aspires to become a principal investigator and have his own lab at an academic institution, where he can work “with like-minded students and faculty to conduct research in environmental sciences/engineering, developing technologies that better the world and help protect our environment.”

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