MANCHESTER – Nashua High School South junior Deepika Kurup will be speaking at TEDxAM14, the annual TEDxAmoskeagMillyard event at Southern New Hampshire University, on Saturday, Nov. 15.

The event will feature 12 speakers, including gender quality and political activist Emilie Aries, writer and cultural historian Howard Mansfield, gene defender Tania Simoncelli, and artist and storyteller Joel Christian Gill.

Kurup, an advocate for clean water since her elementary school days, has been seeking solutions for the global water crisis since childhood through science, technology, engineering and math. Her efforts have paid off with the creation of a safe, cost-effective and environmentally friendly technique to purify water using solar energy.

Kurup, recognized as “America’s Top Young Scientist” in 2012, won the grand prize in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge. She went on to present her research at schools and events worldwide, including the 2013 White House Science Fair, and has been featured in national and international media.

Kurup was honored with the President’s Environmental Youth Award for her environmental stewardship by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. More recently, she won the national 2014 Stockholm Junior Water Prize, and represented the U.S. at the international competition in Stockholm, Sweden, during World Water Week – the most prestigious youth award for a water-related science project.

Along with her passion for solving the global water crisis, Kurup is very interested in STEM.

“I attribute my quest for knowledge to my interest in STEM,” she said. “I am a very curious person, and science provides the answers to many of my questions.”

Kurup said she feels that STEM education has the power to lead people to revolutionary new discoveries that can solve global challenges.

“I have blogged about my interest in STEM in the Huffington Post,” Kurup said. “I was also very fortunate to have the opportunity to speak exclusively with President Obama about my research and the importance of clean water.”

For more information, visit www.tedxamoskeag
millyard.org.