Inspiration
Indian origin teen invents a device for diagnosing lung disease.
17 year old Maya Varma wins first prize at the Intel science competition for inventing a device that can diagnose lung disease. She is joined by two more teens who have won the first place in the prestigious competition. Maya won $150,000 for her invention.
California student Maya Varma has won the top prize for innovation at one of America’s largest and most prestigious high school science competitions, taking home $150,000 for inventing a device that can diagnose chronic lung diseases.
Maya, all of 17, built her device out of a mere $35 worth of basic electronics, but it is as accurate as hospital-grade versions that cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars. She hopes it will save lives in developing countries where a spirometer — that’s what her device is called— might otherwise be inaccessible.
The working of the device is intuitively simply, patients simply blow into the device and a smartphone app analyzes the results. Physicians can use data from Varma’s invention to diagnose and manage chronic pulmonary illnesses such as asthma or emphysema. Varma developed the app herself: She is proficient in five programming languages.
Eventually she’d like to take it to market, in the meanwhile she has applied for a patent and is planning to test the device on a wider scale.
Varma plans to study biomedical engineering in college. She was one of 40 finalists who came to Washington to present their research in the Intel competition, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Previous winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize, Fields Medal and MacArthur Foundation Fellowships also known as “genius” grants.
Besides Varma, two other teens also won top $150,000 prizes. Amol Punjabi, also 17, won first place for basic research for developing software that can help pharmaceutical companies develop new drugs to treat cancer and heart disease. He is from Marlborough, Mass. Paige Brown, 17, the third person to win first place for projects dedicated to the global good. She is developing a water filter to remove phosphate from stormwater systems. She is from Bangor, Maine.
Three students were named second-place winners, taking home $75,000 each, and another three won $50,000 third-place prizes.
It’s no small thing that 2 of the 3 winners are girls, given that science and engineering are fields that have long been the bastion of men.
Image Courtesy: www.washingtonpost.com