Kayla Goodrich was a mere 12 years old when she and seven other inventive students involved in the DiscoverSTEM program created an apparatus that would sanitize groceries right at the moment people bought them.
Their invention was designed to attach to the conveyor belt at a supermarket’s checkout. Items would go through the sanitizer where they would be belted with ultraviolet light rays, killing any germs.
The students came up with their idea at the height of the pandemic, so there was a timely need for such an invention.
“People were trying to sanitize Amazon packages,” Kayla says. “You would go to Walmart and touch the same things others did. It was really scary. We came up with the idea that if there was a quick way to make the groceries clean, people wouldn’t have to worry as much.”
The students’ work was typical for those involved in DiscoverSTEM, a program that encourages innovative ideas from young people between the ages of 10 and 18.
But their next lesson was that the world of inventions can work slowly. Kayla and the others applied for a patent and waited. Then they waited some more. As the years passed, the group went their separate ways, following different life paths, but still tethered together by the memory of their invention and the hope for official patent recognition.
One day, Kayla, who plays the viola, was in her high school orchestra room when her phone showed she had a call from Mirza Faizan, her mentor and the co-founder of DiscoverSTEM Faizan had good news. The U.S. Patent Office had awarded Kayla, now 17, and the other grocery-sanitizer inventors their long-awaited patent.
“I was so happy, so excited,” she says.
Today, Kayla, who graduated high school a year early, is majoring in computer information systems and technology at the University of Texas at Dallas. Majoring in something connected to one of the STEM fields – science, technology, engineering, and math – seems like a natural career path for her now, but prior to participating in DiscoverSTEM she wasn’t sure what direction her future might take.
“I had no proper answer to the question, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ “ she says.
That began to change when Kayla was in seventh grade and DiscoverSTEM entered her life. She was at a science fair with her mother, who struck up a conversation with Faizan, an aerospace scientist and serial inventor who had launched DiscoverSTEM a few years earlier. The next thing Kayla knew she was interviewing for a spot in the program and taking a test that assessed her creativity, abstract thinking, and other traits.
Kayla is among a growing number of girls who are choosing STEM careers. Although women still make up a smaller percentage than men of the overall number of people working in STEM, their share of the STEM workforce is growing at a faster rate, according to the U.S. National Science Foundation.
As an example, the foundation reports that the number of women in the STEM workforce increased by 31% from 2011 to 2021, while the number of men grew by 15% in the same period.
Not long ago, the University of Texas at Dallas held a meeting about cybersecurity that was specifically aimed at women whose career trajectories are in computers. Kayla and about 20 to 30 other female students attended.
“It was really interesting seeing so many girls in one room with a shared interest in cybersecurity,” she says.
Kayla has advice for other girls who are intrigued by STEM fields but aren’t sure if that’s what’s right for them.
“I'd say they have to listen to themselves and they really have to know what speaks to them,” Kayla says. “You can't let anyone else tell you what to do with your life.”
But plenty of people are happy to offer unsolicited advice, Kayla says, even if you were to ask 10 people for advice there is a good chance you will get 10 different answers.
“No one told me to pursue a degree in tech, it was just something that spoke to me,” she says. “So far I've been happy with it and I'm glad that I'm not doing what anyone else told me that I should do.”
Kayla is also glad about the opportunities DiscoverSTEM gave her.
“I think the hope of DiscoverSTEM is that there will be more kids like me who are young and who end up getting taught to invent things,” she says. “Mr. Faisan was presenting to a group just a couple of weeks ago and one thing he mentioned is kids have lots of ideas. Kids are very creative. The goal of DiscoverSTEM is to take those ideas and give them some structure to turn them into something.
“I had a lot of good luck in getting here and I think the hope is to give more kids that same lucky opportunity.”