WHIZ KID: Raghav Tripathi (center), who won a $10,000 scholarship at the 2012 Siemens Competition National Finals, with his mentor Stony Brook University professor Iwao Ojima (left), and PhD candidate William Berger, who assisted him with his project.COURTESY OF STONY BROOK UNIVERSITYRaghav Tripathi is a senior at Westview High School in Portland, Oregon, but he’s already a promising scientist. When the 17-year-old’s mother broke her leg in a skiing accident and refused to take painkillers for fear of becoming dependent, Tripathi began looking into the possibility of producing a nonaddictive alternative. He read about anandamide (AEA), a compound naturally released by the body to ease pain and inflammation. “I thought I could find some way to increase concentrations of this molecule,” he says.
A literature search led him to biochemists at Stony Brook University, New York, who were already doing similar research, so he e-mailed his resume along with a research proposal and asked to work with them. It was an audacious request. But Iwao Ojima, director of the Institute of Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery at Stony Brook, was so impressed by the quality of the proposal that he invited Tripathi to spend 2 months working in his lab in the summer of 2012. “He was clearly an exceptional student,” says Ojima.
The research Tripathi carried out that summer earned him a place in the finals of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology, held in Washington, DC, where he was awarded 6th place and $10,000 ...
