17-Year Old Invents Particle That Fights Cancer, Wins 100k $

By seamus -



I want to talk to you a little bit about Angela Zhang, possibly the world's coolest teenager at the moment. Angela is a 17 year old girl that won 100k $ for developing a revolutionary nanoparticle that fights cancer.
Here are the details: She won the prize money after winning a Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology. Her project is entitled „Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells”, a very long for something that has been described as a „swiss army knife” in medical treatment. The particle can be delivered via drugs and the particle kills cancer cells and deposits materials that assist with MRI imaging. And I have to say, that is AWESOME. In the struggle to find new and better ways to fight off this difficult kind of disease, any victory is worthy of applaud; especially one that's the brainchild of a teenager.
She say's she started working on the cure in 2009, spending over 1000 hours in the process. You have our congratulations, girl!

Now let's take a moment and remember what I was doing at 17:
  • being awkard around girls I liked
  • failing math again
  • was into semi-obscure rock bands (like Tool) and was beginning to switch to the indie genre because back then, indie was still new and cool
  • getting dumped for being too drunk to recognize my own girlfriend
  • about the height of my public accomplishments was realising i was actually quite popular and overall well-liked on the school forum
  • playing WoW
  • sucked at fashion
  • couldn't grow remarkable facial hair as much as I tried

How about you? What are your remarkable accomplishments at age 17?

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