McDowell student’s AP research gains Ivy League attention

Smriti Shankar, a 16-year-old student at McDowell High School, decided to focus her AP Research project on identifying biomarkers in neurological disorders. In her research, she reached out to health institutes for data that she could use for her project, which opened the door for multiple Ivy League universities and research labs to take note of her project. Over the 2024-25 school year, she worked to reverse-engineer a method for biomarker identification for Alzheimer’s disease. She looked at genetics data from patients who already had the condition and then developed an identification method. Her method identified 10 new biomarkers for the disease with an estimated 98% accuracy.

Upon hearing how her research went, Harvard University’s Needleman Lab reached out to Smriti offering to help further her research, which she accepted. Smriti will be continuing her research with the lab as well as presenting at two conferences over the next two summers. She will speak at the 2025 Johns Hopkins Global Health Leaders Summit and the 2026 Congress of Future Medical Leaders in Boston.

Smriti will be a senior graduating in 2026 and hopes to continue studying neuroscience. She aims to become a neurosurgeon or neurologist and hopes to continue neurological research.