Grace Liu

Grace, a student from New York, is the founder of Research to Empower (ReTE) – a student-led non-profit that provides free, engaging, and entry-level research education to K-12 underserved students worldwide. Since launching at age 13, she has reached over 200,000 students across 141 countries. Her non-profit earned formal endorsement from UNESCO as the only student-led implementing program partner for the United Nations’ (UN) International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development (2025-2034). She has raised funding from Google, Riley’s Way Foundation, the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC), and more, to cover marketing, operations, and curriculum printing costs.

Through interactive workbooks, podcasts, and workshops, ReTE helps young learners start their first research projects, tackling topics from breast cancer detection to climate resilience. Grace has mobilised thousands of teens and educators from New York and Minnesota to Kazakhstan and Sierra Leone.

She maintains a perfect GPA, is a published book author of Research to Empower: A Vibrant Guidebook for Young Students, and is a published researcher with work cited by the UN. Grace is also a global advocate for youth-led learning, serving as a UN Major Group for Children and Youth Technology Focal Point, TEDx speaker, youth advisor at NYLC, and a Science Summit 2025 Youth Committee Member alongside the UN General Assembly.

Now building an AI-powered research education app supported by Apple’s Developer Program, proposing a legislative bill to be introduced in January 2026 for establishing a Research Literacy Day, and aiming to establish the first ReTE Centre in New York, Grace dreams of empowering 1 million students by 2030. Her mission is simple yet revolutionary: make research education a right – not a privilege – for every child, everywhere.