Earlier this week, Mr. Biden spent 30 minutes discussing the future of cancer research with 20-year old Neil Davey, Indian-American student at Harvard University who has developed a technology that can identify cancer cells in blood stream at a very early stage.

Mr. Davey was one of the 13 students of Indian origin among the 100 young scientists honoured by Mr. Obama at the White House Science Fair on Wednesday.

Mr. Davey’s technology can single out a malignant cell shed into blood stream by a tumour, among a billion normal ones, through a “liquid biopsy”.

Mr. Davey said this invention would allow not only the detection of cancer, but could be tweaked to diagnose other diseases such as TB.

“If you were the Vice-President, what would you do for cancer research,” Mr. Biden asked him. Mr. Davey said he plans to focus on biotechnology and building diagnosis technologies, and would perhaps consider a start-up on those lines.

Maya Varma from California and Anarudh Ganesan from Maryland found special mention in Mr. Obama’s remarks after his interaction with the students. “We’ve got Maya Varma…Maya is using a low-cost microcontroller, software freely available on the Internet, and a smartphone, and she designed a tool that allows people with asthma and other lung diseases to diagnose and monitor their own symptoms,” the President said.

Mr. Obama also found interesting the story of 16-year-old Anarudh Ganesan, who walked miles as a child in India for vaccination that was found spoiled due to heat.

“Though he eventually got the shots that he needed, he thought, well, this is a problem, and wanted to prevent other children from facing the same risk….So he developed what he calls the VAXXWAGON, and it’s a refrigerator on wheels that transports vaccines to remote destinations,” Mr. Obama said.

Keywords: White House Science Fair, Indian-American scientists (The Hindu)