Update: Eshika Saxena received 10th place in the Regeneron Science Talent Search and was awarded $40,000 for her project.
Congratulations to Eshika Saxena, a senior at Interlake High School, for being named a 2019 Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholar and a top 40 finalist!
Saxena’s project, HemaCam, aimed to create a blood disease screening process for rapid and automated disease identification. She designed a 3D-printed smartphone attachment that converts the phone’s camera to a microscope for documenting microscopic blood smears. Saxena then created a unique database with over 7,000 images of blood cells and developed machine learning models to scan the database and identify a matching disease such as sickle cell with 95 percent accuracy. Committed to sharing her work, Saxena has released her code and database as open source software while also partnering with organizations in the “sickle belt” region of India for large scale field testing.
The Regeneron Science Talent Search (Regeneron STS), a program of the Society for Science & the Public, is a pre-college science competition. As a top 40 finalist, Saxena is invited to Washington, D.C. in March to undergo final judging, display her work to the public, meet with notable scientists, and compete for $1.8 million in awards. Each finalist will receive a minimum $25,000 award, with a top award of $250,000.