NextGen RECOGNIZING STEM ACHIEVEMENTS FOR KIDS AND BY KIDS Teen math genius advocates for girls in STEM, hopes to impact society BY JOANNE BLOOMSTEIN The Human Calculator ALTHOUGH APOORVA PANIDAPU, 17, HAS A MATH ▲ Apoorva Panidapu Apoorva shakes hands with Neil Patrick Harris on the show “Genius Junior,” where she earned her nickname. IQ close to that of Albert Einstein and has been called “the human calculator” due to her extraordinary abil-ity to do quick calculations in her head, there is much more to this high school senior than her ability to calculate numbers at an uncanny rate. The human calculator nickname stems from her appearance on the television show “Genius Junior,” hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, in 2018. “There was a segment; a number cruncher sort of thing where I had to do quick calculations in my head,” she recalls. “When I was younger, I always loved puzzles and number challenges and started learning abacus, an ancient computation method.” She explains that due to her proficiency with abacus, complex calculations are relatively easy for her but shocking to others, garnering her ongoing media attention. “I’m not necessarily that comfortable with talk-ing about myself or having the spotlight on me, but I figured that I could use the platform that I was so privileged to have as an opportunity to talk about the issues that matter to me,” she says. As her academic reputation and international network has grown, so has her interest in communicat-ing her experiences of being a girl in STEM to educa-tors, corporations and other students in the hope of improving the climate for other girls and marginal-ized groups entering STEM fields. “I’ve always been a girl in STEM, a girl in math. As a kid I went to a lot of math competitions and as part of my journey, I encountered a lot of sexism and a lot of toxicity in the math world. … so I make it a point to talk as much as possible about gender inequality in STEM and how it really does start in primary education. “I also talk to a lot of underserved girls in various so-cioeconomic situations about how they can push past it all and how they can pursue whatever they want to do, whether it’s in leadership, business, tech, art, dance — and so a lot of my outreach is just to encourage dreams and talk about all the ways you can move forward.” One of the channels through which Apoorva encourages girls in STEM is through her role as a global ambassador and key STEM adviser for the Girls Leadership Academy Meetup (GLAM). With GLAM, she works directly with girls aged 8 to 12 from various socioeconomic backgrounds as the organization gives them access to mentors in technology and business, teaching them important skills and helping them to make contacts to become leaders in STEM themselves one day. “It is one of the most rewarding things I’ve done, to be able to talk to essentially who I was when I was that age, knowing that I’m making a difference, or at least helping to show them that they’re not alone,” she relates. In addition to her work with GLAM, Apoorva’s outreach has included numerous speaking engage-ments and workshops aiming to increase diversity and equity in STEM. One of her favorites was doing a math workshop for Microsoft’s National STEM Day in 2021 in which she spoke about math in a “fun, engaging way” unlike how many students traditionally receive information about the subject. “A lot of kids are just not used to seeing math in that way because it’s not taught that way,” she explains. “It’s taught in a very structured and, honestly, very tedious way.” She also spoke at the Global Youth STEM Summit during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was a really amazing conversation with countries across the world, in the same activist space and STEM, diversity space … That one was really great because I got to talk about … some of the 26 Diversity in Action | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022 PHOTOS COURTESY OF APOORVA PANIDAPU ▲
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