Jack Andraka has a brace in his top teeth, acne, a squeaky voice, and a hairdo like Justin Bieber. Well, he looks like an average teenage boy! However, aged 15, Jack Andraka found a near-100 per cent accurate test for finding pancreatic cancer. It is very difficult to find this type of cancer in people early enough to be able to treat it. His test can find it early enough to so that almost everyone will survive. Now, only 5.5 per cent of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer live for more than five years. Andraka’s test is 400 times more sensitive, 168 times faster, and 26,000 times cheaper than today’s tests. It will lead to big changes in existing testing procedures. The new testing method can also detect other types of cancer such as ovarian cancer and lung cancer. Jack, now 16, is certainly not average. He got his brilliant idea from a science magazine that he hid in his clothes and read in biology class. With his idea, doctors can use existing technology to test for pancreatic cancer. Jack has his own reasons for stopping pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer killed his uncle as well as his hero Steve Jobs, one of the people who started Apple. After I made my big discovery in biology class, Andraka says, “The teacher hurried over to me and took away what I was reading”. Jack wrote to 200 professors asking them to help. Only Dr Anirban Maitra, at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore was prepared to take the risk. “Because I was too young to work, I was called ‘a volunteer’ and I had to enter the laboratory through a back door”, says Andraka. Jack is very excited by his discovery. He says his new testing method can also find H.I.V., A.I.D.S, Alzheimer’s and heart disease. Andraka does not think he is a genius. He says that he is just an “ordinary kid” from Crownsville, Maryland. However, he has already won awards as an inventor, scientist, and campaigner. He is still too young to vote, drive, or drink alcohol! “I wouldn’t call myself smart,” he says. “I know people who are much smarter. However ... I guess it is how you use information. It is about creativity rather than facts. I am a creative thinker. My parents never told me answers. They told me how to think, not what to think. I disagree with our education system: learning by rote and then puking up all the facts in an exam.” 6 pancreas - Both of Andraka’s parents work. His father Steve is a civil engineer and Jane is a hospital anaesthetist. He has a brother, Luke, 18, who is also a science fanatic. Did Andraka always get good grades? “No! I was bad in elementary school. Mum often had 38 to meet the Principal. I talked all the time. I played practical jokes.” Andraka remembers one time when he played a practical joke on his teacher with a balloon full of water, “Oh yeah. Let’s just say my teacher got soaked. I was a terrible kid, actually.” He pauses. “I was bored so I played tricks on the teacher.” As a kid, he loved the Harry Potter books and played piano, soccer and baseball. He lost interest in computer games “early on”. The boys kept pet rats, then ferrets. “One’s called Faraday, named after the famous scientist Michael Faraday, the other is Ginny Weasley from Harry Potter.” They also have a Golden Retriever dog called Casey. By the age of 11, Andraka had “shaped up”. He was a straight-A student. “People are surprised to hear that I go to a really bad school on the city border,” he says. “There’s like a 50 per cent drop-out rate. They think I’m at a fancy school.” “I don’t believe in fancy schools,” his mother says flatly. Moreover, Jack agrees, “[Government] schools teach you about real life, normal people.” These days he goes to school “one to four times a month” because of his lecturing, and he does his schoolwork online using the computer. Has he ever been in trouble? Alcohol? Girls? “I’m gay, so no. And I wouldn’t know where to find alcohol.” His friends have the same interests: “Maths. Science”. Jack’s cancer discovery won him the top prize at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair — which included $75,000 to help pay for his college tuition. He won a further $100,500 in smaller prizes while his brother won $96,000 for a project about the environment. Luke will study at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Jack has another two years before college — “I want to go to Stanford University”, he says.