Deepika Kurup facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Deepika Kurup
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | April 12, 1998 Nashua, New Hampshire, U.S.
|
| Alma mater | Harvard University Stanford University |
Deepika Kurup (born April 12, 1998) is an amazing inventor and a champion for clean water. She won the 2012 Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Award. Deepika received $25,000 for creating a new, affordable way to clean water. Her method uses the power of the sun!
She was also a finalist in the 2014 international Stockholm Junior Water Prize. Her project focused on a special material that could clean dirty water. In 2015, Forbes magazine named her one of the "30 Under 30" in Energy. Teen Vogue also featured her work. Deepika is currently studying at Stanford School of Medicine.
Her Inspiration to Help
Deepika Kurup was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, in the United States. She has shared many stories about what made her want to work on cleaning water. One big reason was her visits to India, where her parents are from.
Her father, Pradeep Kurup, is a civil engineering professor. Her mother, Meena Kurup, is from Kerala, a state in southern India. Every year, Deepika's family would visit India. She noticed a big difference between the two countries. In India, many children did not have access to clean water.
Deepika saw kids collecting dirty water in plastic bottles. They used this water for drinking, cooking, and washing. She realized this problem affected people's lives deeply. For example, girls might miss school because they had no clean water for hygiene. Deepika explained that women often had to walk for hours each day to get water. This took away time they could spend with their families or earning money. Seeing this inspired Deepika to find a solution. She started learning all she could about the global water crisis.
How She Cleans Water
Deepika's first idea won her the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge in 2012. She used a special material to purify water. This material was a mix of titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, hollow glass beads, and cement.
In 2012, her invention could greatly reduce harmful bacteria in water. It also cleaned water faster than other solar methods. She kept working on her idea and made it even better.
After three years, she created an improved material. This new material used sand, titanium dioxide, cement, and silver nitrate. It could remove 98% of bacteria right after filtering. If the filtered water was then left in sunlight with her special material, all bacteria were gone in just 15 minutes! This amazing improvement made her a finalist for the 2014 international Stockholm Junior Water Prize. She also won the National Geographic award at the 2015 Google Science Fair.
Making a Difference
In 2016, Deepika started an organization called Catalyst for World Water. This group works to share her water purification invention around the world. Their goal is to help more people get access to clean water. Deepika believes that having clean water is a basic human right for everyone. She plans to study neurobiology in college.
