An Indian-American teenager made a revolutionary invention to enhance current treatments for glioblastoma, which is the deadliest form of brain cancer. She was conferred with the 2019 National STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Education Award.
She received a whopping $10,000 award given by STEM Education US. The 19-year-old by the name of Kavya Kopparapu of Herndon, Virginia has been the talk of the town. She has been tagged as an “extraordinarily talented and accomplished” person “who has meaningfully promoted STEM education”, The American Bazaar reported on Saturday.
A first-year student at Harvard University pursuing computer science and biology, the young scientist has invented GlioVision, a precision medicine platform steered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) that predicts brain tumour in just a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods by the application of scanned image of a biopsy instead of DNA sample.
It is a major step to provide treatment for patients with cancer which uses a “deep learning computer system” to identify the molecular and genetic signature of brain tumour characteristics with cent per cent accuracy.
Kavya has been acknowledged for her notable efforts to fight a rare but deadly disease, and to excite others to develop mastery in STEM-related fields.
Interestingly, Kavya is also the founder and CEO of Girls Computing League, a non-profit organisation which has always stepped forward to raise over $100,000 for computer science programming that impacts the futures of more than 3,800 American students.
She is also an experienced speaker. She has delivered talks at the Smithsonian Institution, NASA Kennedy Space Centre, and has also actively participated in several AI conferences.
