Seventeen-year-old high school student, researcher, and tech entrepreneur Samaira Mehta built CoderBunnyz, a board game that teaches children how to code, when she was just eight. Now she’s launching a STEM series from MIT Kids with her first book, Sama Crushes the Code.
How do you think your book will appeal to young readers?
I think they will enjoy the feeling of being seen. It’s a story about a kid who is figuring things out in real time, amid all the noise of starting middle school, new friend dynamics, wanting to belong, and navigating a coding club culture that has its own unspoken rules.
I also think readers will genuinely enjoy the coding itself. The technical vocabulary and problem-solving sequences are woven into the narrative. That’s the difference between coding as subject matter and coding as a storytelling tool.
And the story doesn’t end when the book closes. With the help of my 14-year-old brother, Aadit, I built samacrushesthecode.com as an extension of the novel: an interactive world where readers can continue Sama’s journey, play games and take fun quizzes, and build alongside her. It turns the story from something you read into something you step inside.
What are some of the best ways to get young people interested in STEM topics and careers? Can books help?
Hands-on experiences are essential. When a child builds something themselves, whether it’s a circuit, a game, or a piece of code that makes something happen, they feel ownership of their ability.
Mentorship and representation matter enormously, too. Kids need to see people who look like them succeeding, and struggling, and continuing anyway, in STEM spaces. When I speak at schools, the question I get most often isn’t “how did you succeed?” It’s “did you ever think about giving up?” Kids are hungry for authenticity, not mythology.
And I absolutely think books can help. Sama Crushes the Code is my contribution to expanding what kids believe they’re capable of. Every book that does this honestly, joyfully, and accurately makes the pipeline wider for everyone.
What are your future plans in the STEM arena?
One of my biggest goals in STEM is to use AI to expand access to medical diagnostics in low-resource settings. For the past few years, I have been working at the UCLA Ovarian Cancer Research Lab to develop OVision, an AI-powered computational pathology model designed to assist in ovarian cancer prognosis. It is designed to run on affordable hardware and be deployable in environments where there may be limited access to the internet, electricity, or specialized pathologists. Going forward, I want to continue to work at the intersection of AI, medicine, and systems design.
