you are 17 years old, you just won $100,000 prize for research that has a practical application. tell us what you are working on? i studied the protein paths ways that are deregulated in cancer and i was able to identify a protein that contributes to multiple stages of cancer progression and i showed how inhibiting that protein can be a possible cancer therapy that can fairly targeted and may result in fewer side effects perhaps in the future. how did you get started in this path? i wanted to do molecular biology research, and i stepped into a lab and my mentor asked me to design a project and gave me a lot of papers and told me to read them and said here you go. was your mentor at a private high school or public? he was in a university in michigan. so you were in a program as a high school assistant where you were also able to take college level courses or have mentoring?