San Ramon 8th Grader Wins Science Fair Grand Award

SAN RAMON, CA — Yookta Pandit, an 8th grader at the Quarry Lane School who lives in San Ramon, received numerous awards at the Alameda County Science Fair for her project "Reading the Brain: Using MRIs for Early Detection of Dyslexia."

Pandit's project, which uses an AI model trained on MRI's to detect dyslexia, received the Middle School Engineering Grand Award, the California State and Engineering Fair Nomination Award, and the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge Nomination Award, and the Special Award from the STEM4ALL Organization. Because she was judged to have the best engineering project in the middle school division, Pandit will present her work at the California Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles on April 12-13.

Pandit told Patch that she decided to work on this project because she loves reading, and wanted to help identify children with dyslexia early on so that they can get help before beginning school.

"Existing dyslexia methods wait until reading struggles appear in children, by which point self-doubt begins to set in, as children start to believe that they are less intelligent than their friends," she said. "This emotional impact can carry through the rest of their lives, so for my project, the goal was to develop a model that can detect dyslexia in children before their reading age."

Pandit's tool was able to detect dyslexia with an accuracy of 87.5% and precision of 90%, which is good enough to be used in clinical settings.

"The middle school grand prize for engineering means so much to me, as does the qualification for the California State Science and Engineering Fair, because I've dreamed of this since I started my project," she said. "Moving on to the next level allows me to get visibility in the areas of STEM research and possibly apply it in real life."