Our story
The Lumina Initiative is a student-founded organization dedicated to AI literacy, ethics, and responsible technology education. Founded in 2024 by a 15 years old high school student in the San Francisco Bay Area, we exist to prove that meaningful AI education does not require a university budget, a research lab, or adult leadership — just motivated students who understand the problem from the inside.
We design workshops, run community outreach, and build free resources for students and educators. Our peer-teaching model brings secondary students into elementary classrooms — making AI approachable for learners as young as third grade. Partner school details are available to researchers and collaborators upon request.
100+
15+
Outreach Initiatives
Students Engaged
3+
Workshops Conducted
What we believe
Student voices belong at the table. The people most affected by AI in education are students — and students should help design the response.
Evidence over enthusiasm. We share what we have actually done and measured, not what we plan to do someday.
Replicability matters. Everything we build is designed to be copied. If another student in another city wants to start their own Lumina, we want to make that easy.
Anadita Upadhyaya is a rising junior and 3rd-degree black belt who founded The Lumina Initiative in 2024. A national-level debater and Volunteer Service Award recipient, Anadita brings both competitive discipline and a commitment to community service to everything the Initiative does.
The Lumina Initiative grew out of a simple observation: AI was reshaping the world students live in, but no one was explaining it to them in a way that made sense. So a student decided to.
Meet the founder
Our Programs
Empowering students with AI knowledge through hands-on learning.
AI Workshops
8+ sessions · Grades 6–12 · Students explore how LLMs work, examine real-world AI bias, and practice identifying AI-generated content.
Ethical AI
Discussion-based sessions · All ages · Students examine who builds AI, who it harms, and what responsible use actually looks like in daily life.
Seminar format · Grades 9–12 · Covers AI-assisted diagnosis, the risks of algorithmic error in medicine, and the ethics of health data — the focus area of our BioCode Alliance club.
Healthcare AI
Elementary Outreach
Elementary outreach · Grades 3–5 · Secondary students bring age-appropriate AI literacy to elementary classrooms — our peer-teaching model at its most impactful.