--- description: Find out how Clara Proksch is changing the next generation of leadership and innovation. title: Clara Proksch: TIME's Girls of the Year List image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbce8f4b0b66bb301/6998c85693610c047fc2fd0c/Clara.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Aug 05, 2025 # Clara Proksch Innovator by [Aryn Baker](/author/aryn-baker/) ## Aryn Baker Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close  Sometimes, great discoveries come from simple observations. For 12-year-old Clara Proksch, from Munich, it was watching her younger brothers eat sand from the sandbox in her neighborhood playground. “I was wondering, can it be dangerous?” she says. “And if it was dangerous, then I wanted to know why.” Instead of asking an adult, she decided to figure it out for herself, collecting sand samples from playgrounds around the city, examining them under a microscope, and culturing them in petri dishes. What she found surprised and alarmed her—some samples had needles from drug use, others had high concentrations of bacteria and fungi, especially in sandboxes frequented by younger children. But knowing wasn’t enough for Proksch. She wanted to find a solution. The city of Munich regularly replaces the sand, but not frequently enough to keep contaminants at bay. So she experimented with different cleaning methods by washing the sand with water or exposing it to ultraviolet light and testing the results. Contrary to her expectations, washing the sand with water actually seemed to promote even more microbial growth. Ultraviolet light treatment was the most effective, she says—but also the most difficult to implement in a playground setting. Her investigation won her first prize at a statewide science fair. Now she wants to develop an app to rate the cleanliness of Munich’s sandboxes, and a machine that can use concentrated UV light to clean sand. Her latest observation? When kids speak up, people listen. Munich’s city planning department has taken her findings into account and is working on more efficient ways to clean play park sand. “As a kid, I have another perspective,” she says. “I also have more time to ask ‘why?’ Grownups are too busy to ask these kinds of questions.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/girls-of-the-year-2025/7301989/clara-proksch/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/girls-of-the-year-2025/7301989/clara-proksch/"},"headline":"Clara Proksch","datePublished":"2025-08-05T21:33:26.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T00:52:52.682Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/girls-of-the-year-2025/7301989/clara-proksch/","keywords":["list","franchise","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbce8f4b0b66bb301/6998c85693610c047fc2fd0c/Clara.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Aryn Baker","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/aryn-baker/"}],"creator":"Aryn Baker","articleSection":"World","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbce8f4b0b66bb301/6998c85693610c047fc2fd0c/Clara.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/world/","name":"World"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/girls-of-the-year-2025/7301989/clara-proksch/","name":"Clara Proksch"}}]}] ```