While most teens are focused on school and social media, a senior from McDowell High School is making waves in the medical world. Smriti Shankar is challenging what we know about Alzheimer's Disease -- and offering hope for the future. 

 Shankar is a 16-year-old rising senior at McDowell High School. She has always been an exceptional student. Shankar skipped fourth grade and took a strong interest in sciences. She is a part of special class at her school, AP Research. This class allows students to research any topic, and Shankar chose Alzheimer's Disease.  
Shankar says, "So what I decided to do was identifying these things called bio markers which are genes within the DNA that depict a disease existing within the body. And I used a computational framework that I created in order to find those bio markers."


  Shankar's research is attempting to determine the cause of Alzheimer's. 

  This summer, she is interning with Harvard’s Needleman lab. Her story is truly remarkable filled with curiosity, compassion, and scientific brilliance.