Neha Shukla - Innovation for Everyone: Solving Real-World Problems with STEM

It was March of 2020. The COVID-19 crisis was raging. My high school had just shut down and we were all at home in lockdown. Seeing my neighbors getting rushed off to the hospital and not coming back shocked me. And it felt wrong that someone could lose their life because of a simple mistake of not social-distancing correctly. As case numbers in my own community and around the world started rising, I knew I had to do something to help.

I was just fifteen at the time, but something about seeing my community in pain moved me to take action.

I created SixFeetApart, a wearable social-distancing device embedded in a hat, to help save lives during the pandemic. The device detects when an approaching person comes within the CDCs social-distancing guideline of six feet using ultrasonic technology. It then alerts the user to take a step back to proactively slow the spread of COVID-19.

I had never created my own technology, worked with microprocessors, or built my own prototypes before. But within weeks of starting lockdown, I taught myself how to build with technology and create a solution to a real-world problem, as a teenager tinkering around at her bedroom desk.

By the summer, I had created a full prototype portfolio of three devices to be inclusive for everyone: a hat for use outdoors, a lanyard for schools and offices, and an armband for on-the-go safety. And I built my first app that sends social-distancing notifications to your phone to keep track of your safety throughout the day.

I am just one example of the power youth holds in creating solutions and innovating at times of crisis.

In Brazil, a group of teenagers came together to create a solution to food inequality in low-income neighborhoods of cities. They created Nossa Horta (or Our Vegetable Garden in English), a grassroots movement which constructs urban gardens, promoting community agriculture, and provides healthy food to areas that cant afford it (Simmons, 2022).

Seventeen-year-old Dasia Taylor from Iowa created a new surgical suture that changes color when it becomes infected and needs to be changed. She had the incredible idea of using beetroot juice to identify changes in pH by looking at the color change of the beetroot-dyed sutures (Machemer, 2021).

Kids around the world are taking action today to create solutions to problems close to their heart. Whether its making a solution to help their local community or revolutionizing technology for the world, youth are taking their imaginations and curiosity to a new level with innovation.

Our world is facing many new and growing challenges, like COVID-19, climate change, threats to cybersecurity, global hunger, access to education, and so many more. Over two hundred million people have become infected with COVID-19, causing lasting damage to vulnerable populations and livelihoods and introducing long-term health implications (Centers for Disease Control, 2021).

We have until 2030 to address our growing carbon emissions to prevent irreversible global warming (Watts, 2018). By 2025, cybercrimes will cost the world over $10.5 trillion dollars annually in losses (Brooks, 2021). And over 263 million, or one in five, children and adolescents worldwide lack education, which has hardly changed over the past five years (UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2018). Cancer is among the leading causes of death worldwide, with over 29.5 million annual cases predicted by 2040 (National Cancer Institute, 2020).

These problems are too big to face alone. We need a collaborative approach to solving problems, with young people as part of the dialogue. Problem solvers should not just be male scientists in an isolated lab but each and every one of us, regardless of age, gender, background, or location.

The more people involved in the innovation process, the more problems we can solve and the faster we can do it. Creating an innovation ecosystem is the first step we need to take to solve problems and youth are such a critical part of that ecosystem. We need youth alongside adults and organizations to be solving problems, creating change, and innovatingto build a better world for all of us!

Our generation already has motivation to solve problems, as evidenced by petitions circulating through social media and local movements in our towns. Gen Z already knows what problems to care about, but they dont know how to channel their passion into tangible solutions. To create long-lasting change that addresses the root cause of the problem, we need frameworks and a process to innovate and solve real-world problems. Why isnt there a simple and effective innovation framework anyone can use to innovate?

As a teen innovator, I began compiling and creating my own innovation framework that could be used by students like me who are just getting started in their innovation journey.

Ive been running global Innovation and STEM workshops and reached over fifty thousand students across the globe in my mission to build the next generation of young problem solvers and innovators tackling the worlds biggest problems! In my workshops, I take students through my four-step process of innovation and interactive activities so they leave with a tangible solution to a real-world problem. The students in my workshops are so curious and excited by the possibility of being a part of a bigger cause. Im always surprised by their creative solutions to everyday problems! I was inspired to write this book when I saw students as young as first graders coming up with tangible solutions to massive problems like pollution, within a forty-five-minute workshop. Imagine the power of each student if they use frameworks like my four-step innovation process and work on solving a problem for months, or even a year.

In the early stages of my own innovation journey, I had to figure out so much of this on my own. When I was younger, I wish I had known about finding mentorship, learning from failure, researching effectively, and the process of building with technology to solve problems.

Combining my passion for helping others with my experiences in innovation, I set out to create a simple framework anyone can follow to start solving the worlds biggest problems. I set out to create a framework by youth and for youth to uplift a new generation of young problem solvers.