I stand on this stage because of gravity
illuminated by lights because of
electricity not suffocating because of
oxygen I know all of this thanks to
Newton Edison and Priestley who all
dedicated years of their lives to come
up with his knowledge curiosity is an
animal’s natural instinct that
encourages us to explore ourselves and
the world around us curiosity drives
discovery and innovation without it
Newton wouldn’t have discovered the laws
of gravity and you wouldn’t be sitting
here listening to what a 17 year old has
to say I too am a victim of unstoppable
curiosity it led me to some of the
greatest experiences of my life but the
old saying curiosity killed the cat
isn’t that far from the truth some of
the world’s greatest discoveries went
through years of struggling before ever
making progress
it took Edison a thousand failed
lightbulbs before ever making a
successful one and before she went to
Nobel Prizes Mary Curie struggled to be
a female scientist in the 19th century
when I embarked on my science journey I
too realized that the path to curiosity
would not be easy there was so much more
that I didn’t know that lied behind the
curtains of curiosity when I was 6 years
old my dad took me to my first science
fair which is an event where students
present their solutions to the daily
scientific questions to a panel of
judges and receive expert feedback I
walked around the exhibit hall in awe at
the projects on space exploration and
robotics all done by kids who were only
a few years older than me this was the
I knew I wanted to become a scientist
and science fairs became a place where I
could share my ideas with the world so I
started playing around with solar panels
at the age of nine became fascinated
with the world of nanotechnology at the
age of 13 though I was born in a family
of Engineers I’ve always jumped of being
a doctor because I wanted to save lives
now as many of you know cancer is the
leading cause of death around the world
scientists have tried to find a cure for
centuries and yet we still lose millions
of lives to this disease every year for
those of you who don’t know cancer is a
disease where cells that are mutated
often clump together to form a tumor and
that disrupts your bodily functions and
eventually kills you
the most common treatments that are
being used today are chemotherapy and
radiotherapy
however these don’t always provide the
most promising results and have unwanted
side effects including harm to the
healthy tissue which is something that
you don’t want now this didn’t make
sense to my 14 year old mind because I
believe that every problem has a
solution so I started researching more
in cancer and it came across this
therapy called magnetic fluid
hyperthermia which basically uses
magnetic nanoparticles that are really
really small particles injected into a
tumor and then controlled by an external
alternating magnetic field which
oscillates in the other particles and
this generates heat to destroy the
cancer cells but not harm the healthy
cells this is a very promising therapy
as it is minimally invasive and it has
little to no side effects but the only
reason why it’s still not being used
today is because we don’t exactly know
how to generate the heat required to
kill the cancer cells in the body and
you can’t really just stick a
thermometer in a tumor and wait for the
temperature to rise so I decided to take
this upon myself
and embark on my journey to solve this
promising cancer therapy and my solution
was to use a Millennials best friend my
laptop in the 21st century we are
exposed to unimaginable advancements in
technology that allows us to answer
questions we couldn’t answer 50 years
ago so by using Python computational
fluid dynamics a bunch of differential
equations and the wondrous online
research database more commonly known as
Google I created what I call
ferromagnetic nano therapy a novel
computational solution that for the
first time allows us to see how these
nanoparticles are generating heat inside
the body and physicians can just plug in
some numbers play around with the
computer and receive the required
parameters for an optimized treatment
over all ferromagnetic nano therapy
further progresses magnetic fluid
hyperthermia into the real world by
providing physicians a guideline to
proceed with his therapy into hopefully
routine clinical applications now
speaking of the real world I did all of
this at the age of 16 which meant that
while I was trying to find a solution
for cancer I was also trying to survive
high school now past victims of this
dreaded place warned me that grade 11
will hit me like a truck no it hit me
like a freight train juggling seven to
eight full-year AP courses while doing
my research was not an easy task being a
young teenager who barely understood
Newton’s laws it took me seven or eight
tries just to get through the first
paragraph of her research paper let
alone understand it frustration ran
through my mind as I constantly changed
my scientific method while
simultaneously editing an English essay
every day I was bombarded with new
material in every class which I ended up
adding to my ax growing to-do list that
I constantly ignored while I obsessively
focused on my Reese
and let me tell you saying that you were
too busy creating a cancer killing
machine instead of doing your physics
homework is not a valid excuse
trust me I have tried as both research
and school became increasingly demanding
I was scared of going to school and
disappointing the curriculum for not
having learned it but at this point I
knew that I had to choose one and with a
potential cancer therapy at my
fingertips I wasn’t ready to let this go
so I continued with my research and the
next step in my journey was to validate
my model with some experiments now most
of my past research was conducted on my
ping-pong table and my basement which I
turned into a nano particle stained lab
bench but to test an actual cancer
therapy I needed actual cancer cells to
test on after sending out a few emails
dr. Allison Allen and yang Shah at the
London Regional Cancer Program were
enthusiastic to have a 15 year old
experiment on their cancer cells at
first I was extremely intimidated as I
was the youngest researcher in the lab I
would drive down a few times a month to
test out my prototype and after six
grueling hours I would often return home
without success I felt embarrassed when
my equipment wouldn’t work or when I
wasted cancer cells because my
experiment didn’t go the way I wanted it
to I was terrified every time I put on
that lab coat in fear that I wouldn’t
meet up to the expectations of the
hypothetically brilliant student that I
was supposed to be and that I’ll get
kicked out of the lab for being a
failure but the more that I talked to
the researchers around me I learned that
failure is a vital component of a
scientific method they gave me
encouragement when I was trying to hide
my discouragement and now I call failure
my best friend because it led me to push
barriers I never thought could be broken
eventually after months of staring into
a microscope and spending hundreds of
dollars on machinery and nanoparticles
I found that my therapy was able to
eliminate 88% of the breast cancer cells
that I was testing on in under an hour
which i think is pretty cool excited
with these results I apply to represent
Canada at the International Science Fair
a dream of mine since I was six years
old when I got the phone call I was so
excited to hear the words you’ve been
accepted and instead I heard we regret
to inform you that you didn’t make it I
was heartbroken with science fairs being
such a huge part of my life not being
able to move forward with what I thought
was revolutionary rip the floor out from
beneath my feet and for the first time
during my scientific journey I asked
myself is what you’re doing really worth
it what once brought me joy
now repulsed me to the point where I
shoved all my notebooks into my closet
and hid every file relating to my
research on my computer I was so scared
of letting everyone down of letting
myself down that I felt that without the
success of a gold medal all those hours
of doing calculus research and said of
doing my calculus homework all went down
the drain there were days where I felt
so dejected that neither school or
research were going for me that it
couldn’t even bring myself out of bed
those next few weeks I lived in Oblivion
not really knowing what to do with life
anymore and let me tell you that got
really boring really fast as someone who
is addicted to asking what if I was
about to explode if I didn’t answer my
questions that I was burning up in my
mind so I opened my laptop I went on
Google and decided to give everything
one last shot and this time it wasn’t
for a gold medal and it wasn’t
for validation it was for me and the
Prime Minister of Canada after months of
tireless research and enough frustration
to power a rocket the most rewarding
part of this wild curiosity chase was a
science fair itself even at the science
fair I met people who didn’t take me
seriously who thought it was beyond a 17
year old to come up with such an idea
and they didn’t give me some awards I
clearly remember that when I walked up
on stage to receive second place prize
at the International bio genius
challenge I felt a pang of dejection
when I thought of the assignments that I
didn’t hand in or the faces of the
teachers that have disappointed but then
I asked myself again was it really worth
it well let’s see I was able to present
my work at the National Science Fair
where I not only faced first place and
earned multiple gold medals and then
moved on to represent Canada at the
international bio genius challenge held
at the prestigious bio convention one of
the largest biotechnology conventions in
the world there I was able to present my
work to academic and industry experts
from across the world who not only
listened to my idea but gave me
invaluable feedback on how to progress
with my therapy in the real world but
the most powerful part of this
experience was being able to meet the
hundreds of like-minded young scientists
from across Ontario across Canada across
the world who not only left science just
as much as I do but also don’t think
begging their parents for nanoparticles
is crazy because they’ve probably done
it themselves we are all in different
fields some investigating autonomous
cars while others are potentially
diagnosing Parkinson’s disease with a
snapchat filter but at the end of the
day we are all just young scientist who
relentlessly pursued our curiosities to
make a positive impact
in the world and that was the goal from
day one so yeah the struggles the
frustration and the happiness it was all
worth it
I believe that science does not have an
age limit the young mind has this
unstoppable curiosity and that is what
leads to innovation and progress putting
that idea to paper and then sharing that
idea with the world does take a lot of
work but the feeling is beyond
incredible when you get to contribute a
discovery you get to call your own
no matter how small it is to a larger
network of scientists across the globe
every idea is worth pursuing no matter
what your background or your ages
curiosity will need you on the wildest
of goose chases
but the discoveries you make along the
way ours priceless as diamonds thank you
[Applause]
illuminated by lights because of
electricity not suffocating because of
oxygen I know all of this thanks to
Newton Edison and Priestley who all
dedicated years of their lives to come
up with his knowledge curiosity is an
animal’s natural instinct that
encourages us to explore ourselves and
the world around us curiosity drives
discovery and innovation without it
Newton wouldn’t have discovered the laws
of gravity and you wouldn’t be sitting
here listening to what a 17 year old has
to say I too am a victim of unstoppable
curiosity it led me to some of the
greatest experiences of my life but the
old saying curiosity killed the cat
isn’t that far from the truth some of
the world’s greatest discoveries went
through years of struggling before ever
making progress
it took Edison a thousand failed
lightbulbs before ever making a
successful one and before she went to
Nobel Prizes Mary Curie struggled to be
a female scientist in the 19th century
when I embarked on my science journey I
too realized that the path to curiosity
would not be easy there was so much more
that I didn’t know that lied behind the
curtains of curiosity when I was 6 years
old my dad took me to my first science
fair which is an event where students
present their solutions to the daily
scientific questions to a panel of
judges and receive expert feedback I
walked around the exhibit hall in awe at
the projects on space exploration and
robotics all done by kids who were only
a few years older than me this was the
I knew I wanted to become a scientist
and science fairs became a place where I
could share my ideas with the world so I
started playing around with solar panels
at the age of nine became fascinated
with the world of nanotechnology at the
age of 13 though I was born in a family
of Engineers I’ve always jumped of being
a doctor because I wanted to save lives
now as many of you know cancer is the
leading cause of death around the world
scientists have tried to find a cure for
centuries and yet we still lose millions
of lives to this disease every year for
those of you who don’t know cancer is a
disease where cells that are mutated
often clump together to form a tumor and
that disrupts your bodily functions and
eventually kills you
the most common treatments that are
being used today are chemotherapy and
radiotherapy
however these don’t always provide the
most promising results and have unwanted
side effects including harm to the
healthy tissue which is something that
you don’t want now this didn’t make
sense to my 14 year old mind because I
believe that every problem has a
solution so I started researching more
in cancer and it came across this
therapy called magnetic fluid
hyperthermia which basically uses
magnetic nanoparticles that are really
really small particles injected into a
tumor and then controlled by an external
alternating magnetic field which
oscillates in the other particles and
this generates heat to destroy the
cancer cells but not harm the healthy
cells this is a very promising therapy
as it is minimally invasive and it has
little to no side effects but the only
reason why it’s still not being used
today is because we don’t exactly know
how to generate the heat required to
kill the cancer cells in the body and
you can’t really just stick a
thermometer in a tumor and wait for the
temperature to rise so I decided to take
this upon myself
and embark on my journey to solve this
promising cancer therapy and my solution
was to use a Millennials best friend my
laptop in the 21st century we are
exposed to unimaginable advancements in
technology that allows us to answer
questions we couldn’t answer 50 years
ago so by using Python computational
fluid dynamics a bunch of differential
equations and the wondrous online
research database more commonly known as
Google I created what I call
ferromagnetic nano therapy a novel
computational solution that for the
first time allows us to see how these
nanoparticles are generating heat inside
the body and physicians can just plug in
some numbers play around with the
computer and receive the required
parameters for an optimized treatment
over all ferromagnetic nano therapy
further progresses magnetic fluid
hyperthermia into the real world by
providing physicians a guideline to
proceed with his therapy into hopefully
routine clinical applications now
speaking of the real world I did all of
this at the age of 16 which meant that
while I was trying to find a solution
for cancer I was also trying to survive
high school now past victims of this
dreaded place warned me that grade 11
will hit me like a truck no it hit me
like a freight train juggling seven to
eight full-year AP courses while doing
my research was not an easy task being a
young teenager who barely understood
Newton’s laws it took me seven or eight
tries just to get through the first
paragraph of her research paper let
alone understand it frustration ran
through my mind as I constantly changed
my scientific method while
simultaneously editing an English essay
every day I was bombarded with new
material in every class which I ended up
adding to my ax growing to-do list that
I constantly ignored while I obsessively
focused on my Reese
and let me tell you saying that you were
too busy creating a cancer killing
machine instead of doing your physics
homework is not a valid excuse
trust me I have tried as both research
and school became increasingly demanding
I was scared of going to school and
disappointing the curriculum for not
having learned it but at this point I
knew that I had to choose one and with a
potential cancer therapy at my
fingertips I wasn’t ready to let this go
so I continued with my research and the
next step in my journey was to validate
my model with some experiments now most
of my past research was conducted on my
ping-pong table and my basement which I
turned into a nano particle stained lab
bench but to test an actual cancer
therapy I needed actual cancer cells to
test on after sending out a few emails
dr. Allison Allen and yang Shah at the
London Regional Cancer Program were
enthusiastic to have a 15 year old
experiment on their cancer cells at
first I was extremely intimidated as I
was the youngest researcher in the lab I
would drive down a few times a month to
test out my prototype and after six
grueling hours I would often return home
without success I felt embarrassed when
my equipment wouldn’t work or when I
wasted cancer cells because my
experiment didn’t go the way I wanted it
to I was terrified every time I put on
that lab coat in fear that I wouldn’t
meet up to the expectations of the
hypothetically brilliant student that I
was supposed to be and that I’ll get
kicked out of the lab for being a
failure but the more that I talked to
the researchers around me I learned that
failure is a vital component of a
scientific method they gave me
encouragement when I was trying to hide
my discouragement and now I call failure
my best friend because it led me to push
barriers I never thought could be broken
eventually after months of staring into
a microscope and spending hundreds of
dollars on machinery and nanoparticles
I found that my therapy was able to
eliminate 88% of the breast cancer cells
that I was testing on in under an hour
which i think is pretty cool excited
with these results I apply to represent
Canada at the International Science Fair
a dream of mine since I was six years
old when I got the phone call I was so
excited to hear the words you’ve been
accepted and instead I heard we regret
to inform you that you didn’t make it I
was heartbroken with science fairs being
such a huge part of my life not being
able to move forward with what I thought
was revolutionary rip the floor out from
beneath my feet and for the first time
during my scientific journey I asked
myself is what you’re doing really worth
it what once brought me joy
now repulsed me to the point where I
shoved all my notebooks into my closet
and hid every file relating to my
research on my computer I was so scared
of letting everyone down of letting
myself down that I felt that without the
success of a gold medal all those hours
of doing calculus research and said of
doing my calculus homework all went down
the drain there were days where I felt
so dejected that neither school or
research were going for me that it
couldn’t even bring myself out of bed
those next few weeks I lived in Oblivion
not really knowing what to do with life
anymore and let me tell you that got
really boring really fast as someone who
is addicted to asking what if I was
about to explode if I didn’t answer my
questions that I was burning up in my
mind so I opened my laptop I went on
Google and decided to give everything
one last shot and this time it wasn’t
for a gold medal and it wasn’t
for validation it was for me and the
Prime Minister of Canada after months of
tireless research and enough frustration
to power a rocket the most rewarding
part of this wild curiosity chase was a
science fair itself even at the science
fair I met people who didn’t take me
seriously who thought it was beyond a 17
year old to come up with such an idea
and they didn’t give me some awards I
clearly remember that when I walked up
on stage to receive second place prize
at the International bio genius
challenge I felt a pang of dejection
when I thought of the assignments that I
didn’t hand in or the faces of the
teachers that have disappointed but then
I asked myself again was it really worth
it well let’s see I was able to present
my work at the National Science Fair
where I not only faced first place and
earned multiple gold medals and then
moved on to represent Canada at the
international bio genius challenge held
at the prestigious bio convention one of
the largest biotechnology conventions in
the world there I was able to present my
work to academic and industry experts
from across the world who not only
listened to my idea but gave me
invaluable feedback on how to progress
with my therapy in the real world but
the most powerful part of this
experience was being able to meet the
hundreds of like-minded young scientists
from across Ontario across Canada across
the world who not only left science just
as much as I do but also don’t think
begging their parents for nanoparticles
is crazy because they’ve probably done
it themselves we are all in different
fields some investigating autonomous
cars while others are potentially
diagnosing Parkinson’s disease with a
snapchat filter but at the end of the
day we are all just young scientist who
relentlessly pursued our curiosities to
make a positive impact
in the world and that was the goal from
day one so yeah the struggles the
frustration and the happiness it was all
worth it
I believe that science does not have an
age limit the young mind has this
unstoppable curiosity and that is what
leads to innovation and progress putting
that idea to paper and then sharing that
idea with the world does take a lot of
work but the feeling is beyond
incredible when you get to contribute a
discovery you get to call your own
no matter how small it is to a larger
network of scientists across the globe
every idea is worth pursuing no matter
what your background or your ages
curiosity will need you on the wildest
of goose chases
but the discoveries you make along the
way ours priceless as diamonds thank you
[Applause]
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