This year, Leena Dudi’s passion for science landed her an “out of this world” opportunity.
The incoming Blue Valley West junior became one of 43 girls in the United States — and the only one from Kansas — to enter the White House’s “Million Girls Moonshot” initiative.
The youth ambassador program aims to empower women to participate in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields — which have historically been dominated by men.
Dudi is the only Kansas Youth Ambassador this year
- Since starting the program in December, Dudi and other students age 13 to 18 from across the country met virtually to discuss each other’s paths in STEM and hear from industry professionals from organizations like NASA.
- From these meetings, she learned a lot about how to depict and promote her interests in STEM to other people.
- “I also got to learn about what everyone else in our cohort was doing,” she said. “It broadened my STEM interest because I never knew that you could work in ecology and also have a passion in computer science, which is pretty cool.”
Dudi also went to the “Girls Build Solutions” national conference
- The conference took place in Atlanta and consisted of networking, team building activities and speaking about her experience in STEM on a panel with other students.
- Dudi said she learned a lot from technology and engineering professionals at the event, including keynote speaker Alex Lockwood of NASA.
- Dudi’s mother, Harini Narayanappa — who also has a STEM background as a software engineer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture — also attended the event and said she felt inspired by what she saw.
- “If I knew (at her age) that there was an opportunity like this, I would have participated,” she said. “Being in this gives her a way to showcase what she has learned to everyone else, and that might inspire another girl to get into STEM.”
Dudi’s passion for science is a lifelong pursuit
- At a young age, Dudi’s interest in science sprouted when she began building robots at summer camps.
- As a high school student, she has been heavily involved in her community robotics team, The Cobalt Colts — which has completed projects like building costumes for children who use wheelchairs and promoting STEM and robotics for nonprofits like Ronald McDonald’s House.
- This summer, she’s a lead intern at Lenexa-based Kiewit Engineering, where she has been working on a sustainability project centered around converting water into liquid hydrogen.
- “I’m interested in a lot of things right now,” she said. “I’m sort of exploring computer science, data science and medicine — correlating data to health-related problems and trying to combat those problems.”
The experience has broadened her horizons in STEM
- The program wraps up in December, and after that, Dudi will become a mentor for future participants in the program.
- She said the Millions Girls Moonshot initiative has empowered her to “get her hands dirty” in terms of learning new things and exploring different pathways in STEM.
- “At first I thought like STEM was kind of enclosed and that it focused more on technology, because that’s mainly what I was exposed to,” she said. “But after hearing so many people and all the different pathways that they had through science and engineering, that was really cool. And it kind of broadened what I’m excited to explore and what I’m excited to do.”
Go deeper: Read more about the Million Girls Moonshot initiative here.
