For Nina Cranor, 17, science and mathematics are in her blood.
She is the daughter of two Carnegie Mellon University faculty members. Her mother, Lorrie Cranor, is an expert in online security and privacy, serving as a professor and director of the CyLab Security & Privacy Institute. Her father, Chuck Cranor, is a senior systems scientist at CyLab.
“My parents really normalized science and research in our household growing up,” said Nina Cranor, who is a senior at Pittsburgh Science and Technology Academy.
But while her parents are computer science experts, she is looking to enter a different STEM-related field: Mechanical engineering.
“I’m really interested in engineering,” she said. “I like solving problems mechanically.”
At her school, she has been able to hone in on her fields of interest, having completed a two-year science concentration and an engineering concentration.
It was this interest in engineering and problem solving that drove her research and landed her as a finalist in the 2023 International Science and Engineering Fair after participating in and winning first place in the engineering and robotics category at the Pittsburgh Regional Science & Engineering Fair. Her project, titled “An empirical evaluation of textiles for reusable menstrual pads,” was inspired when she discovered that in certain developing countries, women and girls have a difficult time accessing the menstrual products they need. She also cited the issue that with disposable menstrual products, the cost of purchasing them regularly over the course of the typically decades-long period that menstruation occurs can quickly add up.
So she got to work on researching what types of reusable menstrual products exist and developing and constructing a prototype of a more sustainable, reusable product that was also more waste-efficient. The research consisted of testing fabrics individually to determine their moisture wicking and absorption capabilities, as well as testing different fabric compositions against traditional disposable menstrual pads.
“I looked for fabrics and materials that would be the most efficient and cost-effective,” she said.
Join us at The Assembly in Bloomfield on Sept. 20 to honor our Fire Awards recipients and celebrate innovation, resilience and the spirit of entrepreneurship.
