Hackathons, Using Electrical Stimulation to Destroy Kidney Stones & Self-Growth

November Newsletter 🍂

Dec 01, 2022

Hey, remember me? I'm Krish & welcome to my monthly newsletter, where you get a sneak peek into my life. I’m a 16 y/o who's passionate about emerging technology and researching solutions to society’s biggest problems 🌎.

Throughout my newsletter, I’ll share some of the insights I discovered this month that will help you grow, and which enabled me to work on some cool projects. From dominating a hackathon to presenting research that will eradicate kidney stones, and going on deep dives to refine my mentality, this month has been jam-packed. Check out my November highlights 👇

Introducing PurifyAI 🚰

November started with a bang as I participated in the TKS Explore hackathon. After a mere 3 and a half hours of researching, designing, prototyping and practicing our pitch, my incredible team of Vinaya, Tanvi, Zara, Priyal, Shimoi and I built Purify.AI. Purify.AI is a two-step water filtration system capable of destroying bacteria such as E. Coli without using chlorine, which has been discovered to be a carcinogen. This ensures that everyone around the world has access to clean and safe drinking water, a basic human necessity 🧼.

Every year, 300,000 diarrhea-associated deaths occur among children in India. This pales in comparison to the deaths associated with common diseases that run rampant in India’s water systems, from cholera to typhoid, and polio. The root cause behind this is ineffective water filtration systems. And this is where Purify.AI saves the day. Our solution has two main components:

Detection 🔍 → By using microscopic cameras and pairing them with computer vision (in particular, we used a convolutional neural network), municipal water plants can detect the exact bacteria present in the water by cross-referencing the shape with the KWR water-borne disease database.
Eradication⚡→ Depending on the bacteria present in the water, we program electrode lattices installed in municipal pipelines to emit a specific current, which dissociates the peptidoglycan membrane that surrounds bacteria. For example, a 72 mA current can break down the membrane of E-coli, thus destroying it.

We ended up winning two awards, the best prototype and the best overall award🏆.

This result did not come easy. I vividly recall stressing with my team mere minutes before the first round of judging. If I could, there would be many things I improve for next time. Here are some of my key takeaways🔑:

Crowd-Source 🗒️. In hackathons, you have the luxury of working in teams. Each member comes with a unique skill set, experience and interests. By distributing tasks according to these three points, you can have a more technically-deep solution, rather than a surface-level idea. Once we have formed a collective idea of the problem statement and broken down the prompt, we formed 2 teams. One team was responsible for figuring out the detection mechanism, with the other group responsible for how we will address the bacteria. By crowdsourcing knowledge, we maximized our group's potential.
Don’t Say, Show 📊. if you were to hear our one-liner: “we are using computer vision to detect bacteria and electrode lattices to dissociate them”, you would likely be confused. That's why it’s integral to not only say what your idea is but to show your idea in motion using diagrams and 3D models to allow the listeners to better gauge your idea. Sometimes, the best ideas fail because of their inability to articulate their thoughts in a comprehensible way. If it sounds complicated, people will often stop listening. This is one of the distinguishing features of our pitch. My group put in the time to create prototypes to tell the story, often answering the judge's questions before they could ask them.

System diagram, both in 2D and 3D. Check out the slide deck!

Make sure to subscribe to my Medium to see when my white paper on Purify.AI comes out later this month 📝.

Creating the next treatment for Kidney Stones

According to Penn Medicine, approximately 1 in 10 people will have a kidney stone in their lifetime. Pain in the abdominals, nausea, urine infections, and blood in the urine are only a few side effects that people with kidney stones have to live with until removal 🏨.

Kidney stones are not a new problem, and currently, there are many inefficient solutions to it, namely ureteroscopy and lithotripsy. Both of these methods are host to a wide array of harmful side effects as well, such as pancreatitis, infection, and bleeding.

With the apparent need for new safe methods to remove kidney stones, Reeya & I created ElectroRelief, an invasive patch designed to maximize the effectiveness of kidney stone removal while minimizing the side effects associated with treatment 🩺.

There are two main parts to our solutions, the first being Collision-Induced Dissociation via electrical stimulation to break down the kidney stone. The second component of our device is an Infrared emitter and sensor that maximizes the effectiveness of the electrical stimulation.

We were able to successfully pitch our idea at the HOSA Fall Leadership Conference in front of a panel of experts (results pending). If you are interested in the technical details, feel free to check out our slide deck with more data and models.

A 3D Model of the electrical components inside the patch, created using Blender by my friend Arihan (check out his other projects!)

Insights of the Month🧠

Having a Figure-it-Out Mentality can help you overcome anything💪

Throughout this month, one phrase that I kept repeating was “Figure it Out”.

We have become accustomed to tackling problems with definite solutions. Take school, for example, if you are struggling with a question, you just ask the teacher who will tell you the answer. However, some of the world’s most pressing problems such as climate change and pollution do not have easy answers (if they did, they wouldn’t be problems lol). That’s, why the top organizations/companies need thinkers who can figure out how to solve humanity's biggest problems, without constant assistance.

One of the largest examples of using a figure-it-out mindset was when I founded my school’s DECA Chapter. DECA prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in various fields of business, such as marketing, finance, and hospitality. No such club had ever been founded at my school before, so I had nothing to work with. I started by creating a team of executives to provide new perspectives and to crowd-source knowledge. Together, we were able to not only found a chapter of 60+ members, but we were able to lead our chapter to win numerous awards at regionals

My partner (Pratham, far right) and I won 3rd Overall in the Sports Team Decision-Making Category out of 88 participants😎

Effective Outreach📨

Something I realized during my work with Walmart to improve the customer experience (find out more in Dec😉) is that everyone has a unique life, with unique experiences.

That’s why I set a goal to set up a weekly external meeting (meetings with people that are not your age or not already in your network). By talking to new people, you can “bunny-hop” off their experiences and apply what they learned to your own life, without the pain that came with the learning experience. I've gained much more insight, from potential tools to model gene-editing research to labs that are looking for assistants—simply from reaching out to professors with recent publications in the field.

Morning Bird🦅 > Night Owl🦉

Of all the habits I made this month, waking up early has to be the most important one. I constantly found myself not having enough time in the day. That’s when I knew my current schedule simply wasn’t cutting it. This past month, I’ve been waking up at 4 am - 5 am every day, whether it's for squad syncs (small daily meetings to hold myself accountable for my goals), progress on focus projects, working out or just finishing up work for school. I have been able to gain 3 hours every morning, and 3 x 30 days = 90 hours this month alone. Not only does my morning productivity help me accomplish more, but I can use that momentum throughout the day. Of course, waking up early means being strict with sleeping early, anytime from 10-10:15 pm every day.

From 5 am grind sessions to taking photoshoots in Toronto

What’s Next?🎯

Upcoming Next Month!

Consulting Project Alongside Walmart
My team and I are currently working on a consulting project alongside Walmart toward improving the in-store digital customer experience. We’ve already begun researching and we might even get the opportunity to potentially discuss our solutions with the CEO of Walmart BlueLabs Stay tuned for my December newsletter to read about my entire experience, insights and recommendations.
Publish more Gene-Editing content
This month, I have been primarily focused on gaining more technical insight into the biological process that allows the CRISPR system to work. Next month, I’m planning to consolidate my learning by publishing articles, as well as working with Benchling to design a guide RNA. Stay tuned for a new article coming up!

Thank you so much for reading!

That's about it for now, next month has a bunch of exciting projects coming up... so stay tuned!! Make sure you subscribe if you haven't already to follow my progress on gene-editing exploration & my personal growth journey.

If you have any feedback or would to set up a chat, I would love to connect!
See you next month ✌️ - Krish