ETHAN ZHENG

Project ScreenED
Founder

Ethan Zhang is a 16 year old student based in Beijing, China, and is the Founder of Project ScreenED. Through his passions and experiences in healthcare, music and sports, he aims to advance a more sustainable future for his generation (and future ones) anchored in preventative and holistic health and well-being. 

For him, he believes that cancer has been a prevalent medical concern among many scientists, and within cancer, the specific causes and treatment methods still have a comparatively low recovery rate. Based on this, he believes where he can make an impact is by supporting those who cannot access expensive cancer tests, but also the public in general by introducing this into regular health checks. This formed the foundation for him establishing Project ScreenED, a youth-led initiative aimed at, on an intergenerational basis, increasing early cancer detection amongst all age groups.  

In addition to his work in the preventative healthcare area, Ethan is also active in both academic and extracurricular activities, including winning at Silver award BBO / USABO, entering the Australia finals of the Tiger Global Case Competition, competing in the finals of AWS Deep-Racer, leading a MSP charity project, and engaging as a youth representative for Center for Music Ecosystems, a UN-accredited NGO. 

Currently, he is working on an app integrating machine learning and biology. The yet-to-be-named App aims to serve as a tool to assist doctors by processing and giving results from patient miRNA data. This should allow cheaper and most accessible cancer diagnosis as long as the hospitals have screening equipment.

Looking ahead, Ethan aims to take an interdisciplinary approach to education, while broadening and deepening his knowledge of computational biology in order to create more links and innovative methods. He also hopes to gain more experience doing internships and research, equipping him with the skills required for full-scale projects and a well-developed critical thinking process that can aid him and his future projects in overcoming problems and driving positive systems change in the healthcare industry.