16-year-old Riya Banerjee from Hyderabad, now living in Canada, has won the Global Youth AI Challenge 2025 for developing an AI model that predicts forest fire spread using satellite data and wind patterns. Her tool achieved 93% accuracy and has attracted interest from Canadian forestry services and UN agencies. Riya has expressed a desire to bring her project to India’s Western Ghats and Himalayan states to help in disaster planning. She will be receiving a research grant from MIT to take the model further.