Local teen to get Hollywood treatment

By Mehreen Shahid, Orillia Packet & Times

A Canadian women’s university will honour a local teen in April, and a Hollywood star will make the presentation.

Maya Burhanpurkar, 16, of Oro-Medonte Township, will be honoured with the Emerging Award by University College Brescia in April. The award will be presented to her by actress Geena Davis.

“It’s the Emerging Female Leader of the Year award,” Burhanpurkar explained. “It wasn’t something I applied for. It’s for women who are trailblazing and, in my particular case, (women) who are trying to get more girls to participate in the sciences.”

Burhanpurkar will accept the award at a ceremony April 7 at University College Brescia in London.

“I really don’t know, specifically, why I was chosen; they didn’t tell me,” she said. “I think it’s just everything I do. I speak at schools and try to encourage kids to pursue the sciences.”

It’s not just her public speaking. Burhanpurkar has twice won the Grand Platinum prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair, was named one of Plan Canada’s Top 20 Under 20 and was one of Canada’s Top 10 EdTech Newsmakers of 2014. She also served as president of the Science Expo Youth Empowerment Group, a national non-profit organization that aims to promote science to high-school students across the country.

“In particular, I try to focus on attracting more young girls, especially from rural communities, to get involved,” she said. “I’ve also been involved in International Women’s Day events. Last year, I spoke live on the CBC about International Women’s Day (and) getting more girls into sciences.”

Burhanpurkar is interested in getting Davis’s perspective on women’s involvement in the sciences.

“I’m from a science background and she’s from an arts background, so I wonder how women’s experiences in the arts compare to women’s experiences in the sciences,” she said, adding her own lack of first-hand knowledge regarding difficulties faced by women who choose sciences as a career leaves much to be explored.

One thing Burhanpurkar knows for sure is women are under-represented, especially in the fields of physical sciences and engineering.

“It’s all about bringing together people from different backgrounds,” she said, adding people hailing from different backgrounds have varying perspectives and diverse ways of solving problems — qualities necessary to come up with solutions to some of the most complex problems. “And when you’re missing an entire gender, then that can certainly slow down that creative process, and that’s why it’s really important get women in the sciences.”