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Ellen Xu, a student from San Diego, is no stranger to accomplishing some pretty amazing things. At 17 years old, Xu has already become an internationally-ranked saber fencer, one of the editors-in-chief of her high school's literary magazine and a founder of a non-profit organization, Zipline Theory. Her most recent accomplishment? She just created a computer model that will help with the diagnosis of Kawsaki disease.

Kawasaki disease is an illness that most often affects children younger than 5 and involves symptoms like rashes, swollen lymph nodes and red eyes. The cause is still unknown, but without treatment, affected children have a higher chance of acquiring heart disease.

After Xu's younger sister, Kate, was diagnosed with the disease, she decided to take action. Because the disease is difficult to diagnose (the symptoms are similar to a lot of other illnesses), Xu began work on a convolutional neural network, an algorithm that would help prevent misdiagnoses.

She gathered photos of patients with and without the disease, then trained her algorithm to visually recognize when a photo shows a patient with Kawasaki. According to Society for Science, her algorithm has been trained extensively enough that it can now analyze smartphone photos "with 85% specificity" to determine whether or not a child shows "clinical manifestations" of the disease.

Xu's work in helping children receive early diagnoses of Kawasaki without necessarily needing a medical provider has already earned her accolades. In November 2022, she received San Diego's Public Defender's Award of Excellence for her work. And in March 2023, Xu was awarded third place and $150,000 at the prestigious Regeneron Science Talent Search, hosted by Society for Science.

Xu has done so much for the medical field already, and we have no doubt that she will have plenty more success as she heads off to Stanford University. We can't wait to see what amaze things she does next!

Do you know a teen girl in your life who's making *amazing* change in the world? Let us know by emailing us at getfeatured@girlslife.com!

Slider image: @society4science
Top image: @society4science

by Maggie Salter | 1/25/2024