Marita Cheng awarded Young Australian of the Year 2012!

Victorian engineering student Marita Cheng has been announced as the 2012 Young Australian of the Year.

Still in the midst of her studies at the University of Melbourne, Marita Cheng has been awarded Young Australian of the Year for her efforts in encouraging young women to take up a career in engineering. 

Born and raised in far North Queensland by her Chinese parents, Marita has dedicated herself to making a positive change to the low participation of women in the technology and engineering fields.

In 2008, Marita established Robogals as part of this force of change, as a way to encourage and educate schoolgirls about engineering and how it can contribute to daily life.

Robogals has operated workshops for 3,000 girls across 80 schools Australia wide.

Marita currently holds a Paterson Scholarship and is studying a Bachelor of Engineering and a Bachelor of Computer Science. She is the recipient of two fellowships, the Nancy Fairfax Churchill and an International Youth Foundation (YouthActionNet) as well as an Anita Borg Change Agent award.

Contributing as a former panellist on the ABC's New Inventors show, Marita aims to establish a robotics company that will handle everyday tasks.

Skip to 44 seconds in the Sunrise clip below.

Source:ABC
Robogals: Introducing young girls to engineering and technology