GIRLFRIEND OF THE WEEK: Brittany Wenger, 17, to Save Millions of Lives

Photo by Andrew Federman / Google

You have to be able to accept failure and learn from it.” – Brittany Wenger

I don’t even know Brittany Wenger personally, but I am bursting with pride. She probably won’t get a sweet endorsement deal with Abercrombie or her face on the Wheaties box for physically pushing her brain power, but Brittany Wenger will have an even greater reward for creating a program that can detect breast cancer within 99.1 percent accuracy.

Wenger won this year’s Google Science Fair with her discovery: Global Neural Network Cloud Service for Breast Cancer. She believes it’s hospital ready and plans to make it available. Her project is based on a series of questions that are part of a Cloud network. The answers are based on tissue removed from tumors in the breast, Wegner’s project can  then determine if a tumor is malignant based on answers input into the program. Currently, the more invasive procedure that is in place across the world is far from conclusive, and certainly not 99.1 percent accurate.

Wenger plans to expand on her discovery to include other types of cancer. Take some time to view an interview that her local station conducted.

You may not know this, but the inaugural Google Science Fair top winners were all girls!  First price went to Shree Bose, who discovered a treatment for ovarian cancer patients who have built up a resistance to  chemo drugs.

It wasn’t until the latter part of the 20th Century that medical studies focused on women. According to a study by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), “Thirty years ago there were 13 boys for every girl who scored above 700 on the SAT math exam at age 13; today that ratio has shrunk to about 3:1.”

Good to know, since it appears that women are working hard to save the lives of other women. Keep encouraging young women to enter scientific fields. I think our lives depend on it.

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