A 4-year-old Anirudh Rao living in Nashville, saw a tornado destroy his friend's home. A year later, while most kindergartners were still getting comfortable with reading and arithmetic, Rao began sketching ideas for something much harder: finding a way to warn people about tornadoes earlier. Years later, the Colorado student has turned that childhood question into Revere, an experimental early tornado-detection concept built around autonomous drones and a sound humans cannot hear. Rao says his approach could potentially push tornado warning time from about 13 minutes to roughly 40 minutes.
Now 12, Rao was named a 2025 runner-up for the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, which recognized Revere along with his wider work in science and environmental innovation. The prize describes his system as a network of autonomous, sensor-equipped drones designed to detect and continuously monitor tornadoes.
