When the Zika virus broke out, Gitanjali Rao, now 13 years old, looked into new gene-editing methods that could help fight the disease’s spread.

When Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared over the Indian Ocean, she took a look at building a better black box flight recorder.

And when she heard about people in her school getting bullied on social media, she created an app to detect and monitor cyberbullying messages.

If a problem has Rao’s attention, she’s probably trying to crack it.