Children around the world, when asked to think of a scientist, more often than not imagine a middle-aged, eccentric-looking, white, male scientist (indicate various studies using the Draw-A-Scientist-Test). Now, picture this— the speaker of a TED Talk is announced to be ‘America’s top young scientist and innovator’, who was on the Time magazine cover in 2020, and you see a teenage young woman of colour walking up to the centre stage. That is Gitanjali Rao, breaking barriers like age, gender, ethnicity and stereotypes of who can excel at STEM. She is passionate about STEM and also about sharing her love of STEM. The result of this passion is her book, A Young Innovator’s Guide to STEM in which she earnestly shares her personal experiences and knowledge to motivate and guide young minds interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
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