June Newsletter

Attending Collision, creating a strand of maize to end hunger and training for an ULTRAMARATHON

Hi everyone! Nice to meet you/see you again! My name is Rachel. I am a 15 y/o innovator at TKS interested in agritech, quantum computing, renewable energy, future of food, gene editing, and all new tech. I love running and being outside, and I never say no to a challenge. My biggest goal in life is to help solve poverty.

Happy summer everyone! From attending North America’s largest tech conference, to meeting friends in person for the first time, to continuing with my maize project, this month has been incredible. Before I dive into the juicy details, let’s begin with some videos I made and an article I wrote. ⬇️

Content I made

What I learned from running a marathon at 15

Collision Conference

This month I had the absolute honor to travel to Toronto for the 2022 Collision Conference, the largest tech conference in North America, and it was a truly life changing experience. From meeting my best friends in person, to attending my first conference, to being on a podcast by Forbes, to getting investment offers for my maize project - it was an unforgettable experience. I met global figures such as Gary Kasparov, chess grandmaster, Irving Fain, CEO of Bowery Farms (the largest vertical farming company in North America) and Dr.Siyabulela Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s grandchild and peace and human rights activist. I listened to incredible speakers like Margaret Atwood, Yung Wu, Shely Aronov and Brittany Kaiser. I met so many people over the course of the four day conference and have built important connections and mentorships with some very special people I met during the conference.

One of my fondest memories was being invited to a private collision dinner where I spent the evening with some of the most successful and legit people I have ever met. I now have a list of over 80 people that I met during the conference and will follow up with so we can stay connected.

One of the highlights of the conference was meeting my best friends in person for the first time. I finally got to meet one of my closest friends, Apoorva, and I had so much fun spending a week in an AirBnB with these lovely humans. (Our entire Synthis moonshot team was reunited in person!)

Maize project

I have officially finished my maize project. Last month I published the article which outlines my goal to genetically engineer maize to contain more vitamins, be pest resistant, heat resistant, drought resistant, and produce 3X higher yields per plant. Now this month I published a video explaining in detail the changes I intend to make to maize and how I will make those changes.

Watch the video here

Throughout this summer, my goal is to really get technical with one of the genetic changes I would like to make: removing phytic acid from maize. Phytic acid is a natural compound found in maize and acts as an antinutrient - it prevents nutrients from being absorbed into the bloodstream. My summer will be spent reading research papers and trying to understand exactly how phytic acid works, and what the key genomic regions of phytic acid are that are responsible for the creation of phytic acid. My goal is to have this completely figured out by September and have a mockup created in Benchling so that I can develop my idea in a lab next summer.

Other cool things that happened month

• I am officially an alumni of the TKS innovate program. I am so sad that TKS is over and I won’t be able to see the beautiful group of people in my cohort every week, but I am so thankful for this past year. I have ‘my people’, my best friends who I love so much, I have learned so much about not only STEM, but mindsets and philosophies and I have learned how much I am really capable of. It has been a life changing year for me to say the least, and I can’t wait for the second year program, Activate, to start up in the Fall!

• I just came back from a four day camping trip with my family. We toured around gorgeous Lake Superior and stayed at two beautiful provincial parks - Neys and Rainbow Falls.

What’s next?

• Reading A LOT of research papers and going deep into how phytic acid works and is formed, so that I can discover a way to remove phytic acid from maize.

• Now that I have time in the summer, a fun project of mine will be to redo my personal website. I made my current website quickly in Google Slides, so I am excited to spend more time making a really nice website from a template I bought in WordPress.

• I am currently in the process of creating a vlog-style video that showcases what it was like attending Collision. Throughout the week I spent in Toronto I had a lot of fun taking videos and vlogs with friends at the conference and the AirBnB where we stayed. Now I am piecing all these videos together to create a video which I can’t wait to share next month! (It has been so much fun looking through all the photos and videos - so many memories!✨❤️)

• The summer project I am most excited about is creating a hydroponic vertical farming system (hydroponics is farming with water - typically, plants are grown in soil, but with hydroponics, the plant roots are instead suspended in water which is circulated by a pump throughout the system). This summer I am doing lots of research about how to create a successful hydroponics farm at home, and very soon I will be putting my research into motion by creating a vertical farm in my basement! You can except photos and videos next month!

• I am so excited to announce that this fall I will be running an ULTRAMARATHON! After having a phenomenal time training for and running the Ottawa marathon in close to a Boston qualifying time, I am curious to see how much more I am capable of. That is why I will be running a 50km ultramarathon in the beautiful trails of Northern Ontario this fall. So as you can expect, I have lots of beautiful training sessions and runs in the trails ahead of me.

• Lots of camping, hiking, biking, kayaking, and nights by the fire enjoying the company of my wonderful family.

  

  Pic from a beautiful hike along Lake Superior

And that, my friends, is what I have been up to this month! It has been a super busy month, jammed pack with fun things. I hope that you had a wonderful June and enjoy all the joys that summer brings!

Enjoy the sunshine and see you all next month! ☀️🌱🌻

Until then, feel free to reach out to me on: LinkedIn, or email me at: runnerrachel.lee@gmail.com

And don’t forget to hit that subscribe button on Medium and YouTube so you can read my articles and watch my videos as I publish them.

Happy summer and have a lovely rest of your day!

❤️Rachel