Manan Shah
San Francisco bay area high school student Manan Shah earned a $25,000 Davidson Fellows Scholarship. The Los Altos, Calif. resident Manan Shah’s research project on breast cancer earned him a $25,000 Davidson Fellows Scholarship.

LOS ALTOS, Calif. (Diya TV) — San Francisco bay area high school student Manan Shah earned a $25,000 Davidson Fellows Scholarship.

Los Altos, Calif. resident Manan Shah’s research project on breast cancer earned him a $25,000 Davidson Fellows Scholarship.

According to the nonprofit Davidson Institute’s website, the mission of the scholarships is “to recognize, nurture and support profoundly intelligent young people and to provide opportunities for them to develop their talents to make a positive difference.”

Shah begins studies at Stanford soon, studying computer science and mathematics.

His research project, Deep Learning Assessment of Tumor Proliferation in Histopathological Images for Categorical and Molecular Breast Cancer Severity Diagnosis was broken down in layman’s terms.

“Breast cancer is the most common cancer worldwide, and tumor proliferation speed is an important biomarker of breast cancer patients’ prognosis,” he said.Current methods are fairly limited and can produce inaccurate results. Shah’s project aims to develop a better way.

“I created a comprehensive tumor proliferation assessment system using novel, highly specialized, deep-learning frameworks to assess the severity of tumor growth and spread from a digitized tissue slide,” he said.

Personal travails motivated Shah. Upon learning his grandfather, who lives in India was diagnosed with prostate cancer, he “gained a firsthand understanding of the travails that accompanied the diagnosis. I envisioned my computational system as a way to alleviate the extended wait times and decrease the chance of pathologist misdiagnosis,” said Shah, who hopes his work will “pave the way for assessment on an automated, larger scale.”

Shah also garnered a $3,000 scholarship from the Siemens Foundation last November, qualifying for the $50,000 scholarship, which he won at the 17th annual Siemens Competition national finals.

Information for article courtesy of the Los Altos Town Crier.