Three Indian-origin students have made it to Time Magazine’s list of 25 most influential teens of 2018.
Indian-American Kavya Kopparapu, Rishab Jain, and British-Indian Amika George featured in the group, who have made a mark in their respective fields and inspired youngsters across the globe.
Rishab Jain, an eighth-grader from Oregon, developed an algorithm that can possibly cure pancreatic cancer. The 14-year-old developed a software tool that, during simulations, has helped doctors zero in on the pancreas more accurately, ideally improving treatments, Times Magazine reported. The algorithm won Jain the $25,000 top prize at the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge in October. He is now looking for partners, either hospitals or independent physicians, who could help him run a clinical trial to continue testing.
18-year-old Kavya Kopparapu decided to develop a system to improve the survival rate of glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, which has not improved for the past 30 years.
The Indian-American, who recently got admitted to Harvard University, developed a deep-learning computer system that can scan slides of tissue from brain cancer patients looking for differences in density, colour, texture and cellular alignment that are unique to that particular person’s case.
She aims “to develop targeted therapies that are also unique to the person.”
Amika George, a 19-year-old, only goal is to end “period poverty.” She aims to convince policymaker to allocate fund for the distribution of menstrual products to girls and women who cannot afford them.
“It really upsets me,” she tells the magazine on learning that many girls in the UK were routinely missing school during their periods because they could not afford to buy menstrual products.
She launched the #FreePeriods campaign as a response, gathering nearly 200,000 signatures on her petition to help eradicate period poverty; the movement eventually garnered the support of over a dozen U.K. policymakers, galvanising the government to allocate funds to the issue for the first time.
