WASHINGTON - At 13, he was getting his Associate of Arts degree from North Hennepin Community College. Two years later, the 15-year-old junior at Breck was awarded one of the most prestigious undergraduate scholarships in the country.
Caleb Kumar of Blaine developed an algorithm that automates the diagnosis of bladder cancer. For his work, Kumar was awarded a $25,000 Davidson Fellows Scholarship from the Davidson Institute of Nevada.
By first identifying indicative bladder cancer cellular characteristics, Caleb programmed morphometric algorithms to quantitatively examine the bladder cell images, and then engineered a Java neural network that differentiates cancerous cells from normal cells based on shape, color and curvature. The Davidson Institute says Caleb's software is accurate, quick and inexpensive compared to current methods, and has the potential to provide faster, cheaper and more precise diagnoses of cytological diseases.
The Davidson Fellows Scholarship awards $50,000, $25,000 and $10,000 scholarships to extraordinary young people, 18 and under, who have completed a significant piece of work in one of the following categories: mathematics, science, literature, music, technology, philosophy and outside the box.
Caleb was one of 18 students to be named to this year's Davidson Fellows list.
(Copyright 2011 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
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