Girlboss Sanskriti Deva Is Saving Our Planet through Technology- And Wants You to Join Her
There isn’t one way to describe Sanskriti Deva. She is a high school student, researcher, entrepreneur, inventor, activist, and now author of the book “Technology: The History of Humankind”. Sanskriti’s work revolves around creating technology that helps the world and working with legislators on equity policies. Sanskriti has been awarded numerous international accolades for her research and is really passionate about using technology to help save the environment. I got to sit down with Sanskriti and ask her more questions about her journey so far, projects, and how you can get involved.
Q: So how did you get involved with technology and sustainability?
I got involved with technology early on. After taking a couple of engineering classes I realized that I really enjoyed the subject. After that, I started building things in my free time and started talking to my teachers about the things I was building. They ended up guiding me on how to turn my passion into something more and I ended up doing a lot of independent research projects through that guidance. Sustainability is something that came on my radar when I was young too. My parents always made sure we understood the importance of protecting the Earth and drilled into us that we have to leave it better than we found it. I then got the opportunity to work on a couple political campaigns and server on my area’s youth council where I helped work on sustainability policies.
Q: What projects have you been working on? How do they combine sustainability and technology?
I’ve been working on launching the SmartCan, which is a trash can that sorts out your compost and recycling from your landfill items automatically through image processing. I hope that this is able to reduce the amount of trash we mindlessly put into the waste stream. I’ve also been working on other projects that aren’t directly related to sustainability. I created a series of neural networks with a partner to help identify exoplanet candidates and also did research on how to make neural networks faster.
Q: What’s something you wish more people knew about the climate crisis?
I wish more people knew that there’s so many ways to help and that even the little actions count! Some of the ways to help are more obvious than others-protesting, recycling, turning the lights off. But you can also do things like do research related to the issue you want to solve and see how you can fix it. Contact a local university and ask if you can help with projects they're doing. You can also help lobby for more sustainable legislation in your city. Do Instagram campaigns. Get creative for it. Use your passions and see how they can be applied. It can be as big or as little as you want. Anything and everything helps!
Q: Do you have any advice for people wanting to help save the environment?
Don’t be afraid to ask for help or reach out to someone you aspire to work with. Find communities on social media or in real life of people who want to help. And most of all, know that every action helps.
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