Metro Atlanta 14-year-old wins national STEM contest, $10K prize
GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. - When you think about a middle school science fair, images of a volcano eruption or turning a pickle into a battery might come to mind. But how about a project that helps diagnose and treat cancer? That's the project that helped a local student win a nationwide STEM contest along with a $10,000 prize.
Keshvee Sekhda might only be 14 years old, but she's already working on making the world a better place.
"So A.I. is really relevant right now and so is cancer, and there are a lot of people who are getting cancer in these modern times. And so I saw a lot of people in my community dying because of late or false diagnoses, so I really thought I should create something to help those people," Sekhda told Good Day's Lindsay Tuman.
Two years ago, when Keshvee was in seventh grade, she decided to get started on that project. She teamed up with her friend, and they decided to build an app to help detect and treat cancer.
"So basically, it uses fractal geometry and machine learning and different algorithms in order to provide patients with cancer diagnosis and treatment for breast, lung, and skin cancer, and this year we are adding brain cancer and pancreatic cancer as well," she explained.
They poured in hundreds of hours after school. Sekhda calls it her passion project.
"First, for the app itself, we had to do some research - learn the machine learning, find the data for everything. and learn what algorithms we really needed to use. So it's a lot of trial and error for that aspect of it," she said.
(Jessica Yurinko/Society for Science)
They entered that project into their middle school science fair and won. They then won a state science fair and a regional one. From there, they competed with about 6,000 other science projects in the Thermo Fisher Junior Innovator's Challenge. A prestigious group of judges from across the country then reviewed around 2,000 applications to choose the top 300 middle school scientists. Ultimately, out of 60,000 projects across the country, a panel of judges chose Sekhda as one of the 30 finalists.
Maya Ajmera is the President and CEO of the Society for Science, which hosts the competition.
"After the 30 finalists are chosen, which happened in early October-late November, they are then put into teams, and they're given challenges, environmental, coding challenges. And they're really looked at for teamwork, communication skills, how do you solve a problem, how do you get along with your teammates. That, along with their project, selects the top winners," Ajmera explained.
Sekhda, who is now a freshman at North Gwinnett High School, was awarded the Broadcom Coding with Commitment Award along with a $10,000 prize.
"She used coding to make this happen, and what an important app this is and how young she is. I can't wait to see what her trajectory is like through high school and college," Ajmera said.
Sekhda says she and her partner are still working hard on the app. They want to release it across the country.
"We asked some of the hospitals if they like what they see in our app as well as what they would like to see. And we also asked patients ‘If you were a patient using our app what would you like to see?’ So that's what we're working on adding to our app as well." she said.
A freshman in high school, working to revolutionize the medical community right now.
"They are young, but they carry the weight on their shoulders that there are problems out there, and they feel compelled to go out and seek answers, seek solutions, and that's amazing," Ajmera said.