Hi, I'm Sri.
I'm eleven. I live in Grapevine, Texas. I REALLY like building things, especially weird little gadgets with wires sticking out. I started this whole project because of a tiny argument with my mom about my lunchbox. (More on that in a second.)
The Lunchbox Story
Every day after school, my mom checks my lunchbox and finds food I didn't eat. I always say, "Oh! I'll finish it now!" And she always says, "No, it's not safe anymore." And boom, into the trash it goes. Every. Single. Day.
"Wait. If WE throw away food at home, how much do restaurants throw away?"
That question would NOT leave me alone. So I asked someone. I picked my favorite donut shop, walked in, and asked. The answer was six thousand donuts a day. Six thousand! Not because they were bad. Because the shop was scared they might be.
So I went and looked up the bigger picture. In Texas, 5.7 million tons of food get thrown away every year. Meanwhile, 1.3 million people just in Dallas–Fort Worth don't have enough to eat. That made me kind of mad? So I started building a gadget that could tell the difference between "this is actually bad" and "this is fine, you're just guessing." That's EcoServe.
Fun facts!
- Favorite animal A dog 🐕
- Schooling Public school
- Free time hobbies Chess, world history, building stuff
- Project notebook says "What worked. What failed. Mostly failed."
- Worst experiment so far When the USB cable was lying to me for 4 weeks
- Heroes Albert Einstein (he invented a safer fridge once)
My EcoServe story so far.
- Oct 2025
The lunchbox argument
I kept wondering: why is food that was fine at breakfast suddenly "not safe" by lunch? I started reading. A LOT.
- Dec 2025
I became a Davidson Ambassador!
I got picked for a national group of kids doing big projects. My advisor is Nuntiya Smith. She is really nice.
- Jan to Mar 2026
Built versions 1 through 5 of my gadget
Each one taught me something (mostly: how it could break). Version 4 caught spoiled rice 8 hours before my own nose did. Whoa.
- Mar 2026
I changed the plan
I went to talk to actual food pantries. They told me they didn't need a sensor. They needed kids and families to learn what food labels really mean. So that's what I switched to.
- May 2026
Launched EcoServe.org!
Put up the Label Decoder, the Lab Notebook, and the rest of the free toolkit. Everything free, everything shareable.
- Summer 2026
Workshops + Bay Area trip (right now!)
I'm running hands-on sensor builds with my Girl Scout troop and trying to pitch a museum demo in the Bay Area.
