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At 16, Grace Sun won the world’s largest pre-university science fair by creating a promising technology that could boost medical devices capable of diagnosing and treating serious diseases.
According to Regeneron and the Society for Science, Grace Sun, 16, a resident of Lexington, Kentucky, won first place and the coveted George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award, worth $75,000, at the 2024 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) — the largest pre-university science and engineering competition in the world.
The award, which honors a pioneer in drug development, crowned a surprisingly advanced research project for a high school student: Grace worked to build a better version of an organic electrochemical transistor — an electronic component she hopes will be used in the development of new devices capable of detecting and treating serious diseases such as diabetes, epilepsy, and organ failure.
According to the same source, to overcome the problems that previously prevented these devices from functioning effectively within the body, Grace developed a new way to chemically treat their organic components, which greatly improved their performance in the lab. Grace’s story is proof that scientific curiosity knows no age — and that a young mind, faced with a problem that had challenged researchers for years, can find precisely the missing piece to unlock it.
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A problem that had resisted for years
To understand the magnitude of what Grace achieved, one must first understand the obstacle she faced — a challenge that experienced researchers had been trying to solve for a long time. According to Science News Explores, a publication of the Society for Science, Grace is a junior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Lexington. What she improved was a type of electronic device that could work inside the human body to help diagnose and treat health problems. Her innovation affects a type of transistor — which is a device that amplifies electrical signals.
And here is the central point: the type of transistor Grace worked with is capable of capturing electrical signals that naturally occur in the body and then amplifying them. As she herself explained, according to the publication, an implanted version of this device could one day help regulate a person’s heartbeat or monitor their blood sugar levels.
The revealing detail is that researchers have been developing these bioelectronic devices for many years — in other words, it’s not a new idea, but a field that faced persistent technical barriers. It was precisely on one of these barriers that the young woman from Kentucky focused her effort, seeking a solution that adults had not yet found.
What is a transistor that “talks” to the body
The heart of Grace’s research lies in a special type of electronic component — and it’s worth understanding, in simple terms, why it is so promising for the medicine of the future. A transistor, in general, is one of the most fundamental pieces of modern electronics: it functions as a switch and amplifier of electrical signals and is present by the billions in any cell phone or computer.
What makes the organic electrochemical transistor so special is that it is made of organic materials — carbon-based, more compatible with living tissues — and is capable of operating in moist environments, like the inside of the human body. This is a crucial difference. Most traditional electronic components, made of silicon and rigid metals, do not fare well in the salty, moist, and sensitive environment of a living organism. An organic transistor, in theory, can serve as a bridge between biology and electronics, “translating” the body’s electrical and chemical signals into a language that machines understand — and vice versa.
This is why these devices are seen as the future of implantable medical devices: sensors that continuously monitor a diabetic’s glucose, smarter pacemakers, or implants capable of detecting an epileptic seizure before it happens. The problem is that making these organic materials work stably and efficiently has always been a huge technical challenge — and that’s exactly where Grace innovated.
The chemical solution that changed everything
Grace’s specific contribution, although explained by her in simple terms, represented a concrete breakthrough that impressed the judges of the world’s largest science fair. Grace’s merit was developing a new way to chemically treat the organic components of these transistors — a process that greatly improved their performance in laboratory tests. In other words, she didn’t invent the organic electrochemical transistor from scratch, but found a way to make it significantly better, addressing precisely the weak points that prevented these devices from working well inside the body.
This type of contribution — solving a specific technical bottleneck that hinders the advancement of an entire technology — is highly valued in science because it can pave the way for many other applications to finally become viable. It’s important to keep perspective on the stage of the research: it’s a proven improvement in a laboratory environment, an important step, but still far from a product ready for medical use.
From the laboratory to an approved implantable device for patients, there is a long path of testing, validations, and clinical trials. Even so, the value of Grace’s work lies in having demonstrated, with scientific rigor, that her approach works — and in having done so while still in high school, competing against the best young scientists on the planet.
The largest science fair in the world
To gauge Grace’s achievement, it is necessary to know the stage where it happened — a competition that brings together the young scientific elite from dozens of countries. The Regeneron ISEF is the largest pre-university science and engineering competition in the world and has existed since 1950, when it was created by the Society itself. To get there, students — all between ninth and twelfth grade — must first win local, regional, state, or national science competitions.
The 2024 edition, held in Los Angeles, California, distributed over 9 million dollars in prizes and scholarships, evaluating finalists for their creativity, innovation, and the depth of their scientific investigation. The top prizes that year went to projects in varied and sophisticated areas: besides Grace’s bioelectronics, there were awards in second-order cone programming, microplastic filtration, and multisensory therapy for dementia.
Another standout young person was Michelle Wei, 17, from San Jose, California, who received the Regeneron Young Scientist Award of 50,000 dollars. The competition, therefore, is not a common school science fair — it is a true world championship of young science, where teenagers present research that, in many cases, rivals university or postgraduate-level work. Winning the main prize in this environment places Grace Sun in a select group of the most promising young scientists in the world.
A generation that solves grown-up problems
Grace’s achievement is part of a broader and inspiring phenomenon: young people who, increasingly early, dedicate themselves to solving some of humanity’s most complex problems. What is most impressive about Grace Sun’s story is not just the prize money or the prestige, but the fact that a teenager decided to tackle a frontier science problem — the interface between electronics and the human body — and managed to make a real contribution to advancing this field.
According to Science News Explores, the president of Regeneron, George Yancopoulos, who gives his name to the award, often recalls that his own high school science project was what ignited the passion that changed the course of his life. This is perhaps the greatest lesson from Grace’s journey: great scientists do not emerge fully formed, but start exactly like this — as curious young people, willing to dive into difficult problems long before they have a diploma.
The potential applications of her work are breathtaking: imagine a future where a small implanted device warns of an epileptic seizure before it occurs, monitors a diabetic’s glucose in real-time without the need for constant pricks, or helps keep a failing organ functioning. Each of these scenarios depends on technologies like the one Grace helped to improve.
