My name is Meenakshi Nair, a high school senior from the San Francisco Bay Area, the world’s hub of technological development.

I was interested in technology from a very young age. I learned Python and java in middle school and started building mobile applications using Thunkable and Swift since 7th grade.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed my thought process and perception of technology. I became more interested in real-world applications and the impacts of technology on people during the lock down.This new perspective led me to build a CO2 tracking and monitoring tool using Arduino and Python along with a group of two friends.

The app aimed to help businesses safely reopen and recover from COVID impacts. The app was built for IOS using Apple’s native IOS development environment, the Swift language, Google Cloud for Data Storage, HighCharts for trend analysis, and Text Recognition AIs provided by Apple’s CoreML.

My team was invited to pitch our app at Technovation’s annual World Summit event as a finalist team selected from over 2,700 teams from 62 countries and won the Technovation Girls Junior Division Grand Prize. I have been a Technovation ambassador for last four years, where my role is to make sure that girls in my community are aware of the program and support them through the Technovation journey.

I am also passionate about conducting research and working on projects involving engineering, computer science and AI. I have published research papers on AI/ ML applications to solve real world challenges. My research has won special awards at International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF 2024). In my free time, I enjoy photography, dance, and taekwondo.