Fifteen-year-old Nathan
Han received the prestigious Gordon E. Moore award at the Intel International Science and
Engineering Fair, which is the largest international pre-college science
competition, for his creation of a software tool that can "identify and
predict cancer-causing mutations in a person's DNA."
"I
did this by minding-mutation data from online public domain databases and then
performing statistical analysis on how those mutations changed certain
properties of proteins," explained the teen scientist to HuffPost in a
recent visit.
While
Han walked away with the $75,000 prize and the title as winner, he said this is
certainly not something he was expecting. In fact, he got quite discouraged along
the way as he had difficulties finding a laboratory research mentor because of
his young age.
"I
actually got rejected from a bunch of internships for liability reasons
since I'm 15 and you have to be 16 apparently for a lot of
opportunities like that," Han said. "But I think the main message is
don’t be afraid to follow your dreams even if something unfortunate like that
or obstacles happen.
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