Boulder, CO, September 17, 2024 – Ekansh Mittal, age 17, of Portland, Oregon, has been named a winner of the 2024 Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes. The Barron Prize annually honors 25 outstanding young leaders who have made a significant positive impact on their communities or the environment. Fifteen top winners each receive $10,000 to support their service work or higher education.
Ekansh has worked for five years to improve outcomes for cancer patients through scientific research. He is especially passionate about personalized cancer treatments that precisely target cancer genes and account for patients’ individual differences. Using machine learning, he developed a way to identify genes responsible for resistance to cancer-fighting drugs and created a novel 3D model to validate the effectiveness of targeting these genes. Ekansh found that doing so was significantly more effective than traditional chemotherapy in killing cancer cells while preserving healthy cells. His methodology could improve individual patient treatment plans as well as the process by which drugs are selected for clinical trials.
Ekansh began his work at age 14 when his grandmother in India passed away just two months after her cancer diagnosis. Knowing that early detection could have helped her, he began researching detection methods outside of conventional MRIs and CT scans that would be accessible to rural populations. He developed a way to easily measure for a type of bacteria that is prevalent in some cancer patients, creating a simple but effective way to screen for certain cancers. Ekansh has published his research and presented it at the American Association for Cancer Research conferences. Committed to supporting other youth in studying STEM, he founded www.STEMUniverse.net and has provided online science and math workshops to 200 underserved students in five countries. “As a scientist, it is my responsibility to discover new solutions to the problems in the world,” says Ekansh. “It is also my responsibility to foster an interest in STEM for the next generation to develop future leaders.”
The Barron Prize was founded in 2001 by author T. A. Barron and was named for his mother, Gloria Barron. Since then, the Prize has honored 600 young people who reflect the great diversity of America. All of them demonstrate heroic qualities like courage, compassion, and perseverance as they work to help their communities or protect the planet.
“Nothing is more inspiring than stories about heroic people who have truly made a difference to the world,” says T. A. Barron. “And we need our heroes today more than ever. Not celebrities, but heroes – people whose character can inspire us all. That is the purpose of the Barron Prize: to shine the spotlight on these amazing young people so that their stories will inspire others.”
For more information, visit www.barronprize.org
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