In the Limelight
On the occasion of International Women ' s Day , we decided to pay tribute to two of our amazing girls , who are always shining in the limelight .
Sayyida Rania Hashim is a grade 10 student . She was an eminent speaker for the Youth STEM Matters Research Conference . In her talk , she elaborated on the broken food system , suggesting a technological solution . She also spoke about her personal projects . We just had to conduct an interview with this promising student .
I . H o w d i d y o u f i r s t c o m e t o b e s o i n t e r e s t e d i n b i o t e c h n o l o g y a n d a l t e r n a t i v e f o o d s y s t e m s ?
I was always passionate about climate change and after doing further research , I realised that the biggest contributor to climate change wasn ' t just factories or vehicles but also the way we produce food . This also happened to be the silent driver of climate change that we give less attention to .
Interestingly , I started off in the activism space , advocating for veganism and so on . Moreover , I was the organiser of the Dubai Chapter of a global youth movement for climate change called Youth Climate Save ( YCS ). As I moved forward with this , I realised that all my thinking was based on a scarcity mindset and that mass behaviour change was clearly impossible . Moreover , there are nutritional and financial barriers that may stand in the way of someone who wants to be vegan .
Hence , I used a first-principles approach to break down the problem and find a solution - and this happened to be in biotechnology ! Then , I joined a human accelerator program known as The Knowledge Society , which gave me the tools , skill sets and mindsets to advance further .
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