Giving Compass' Take:

• A teenager from Oregon named Rishab Jain has won an award for his work testing an algorithm to improve pancreatic cancer detection and treatment.

• What can this youngster teach us about the uses of artificial intelligence in the field of medicine? How can we support more bold ideas and STEM learning to produce future groundbreaking scientists?

• Amazingly enough, Jain isn't the only teen prodigy of pancreatic cancer: Meet Jack Andraka.

Discovery Education and 3M have named 13-year-old Rishab Jain the winner of the 2018 Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge. Rishab created an algorithm to make pancreatic cancer treatment more effective by using artificial intelligence to accurately locate and track the pancreas in real-time during MRI radiotherapy.

Pancreatic cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, according to pancreatic.org. An inherent challenge of radiation treatment for pancreatic cancer resides in targeting the pancreas itself. Firstly, it is often obscured by the stomach or other nearby organs, making the pancreas difficult to locate and second, breathing and other anatomical changes may cause the pancreas to move around in the abdominal area. As a result, radiotherapy treatment can inadvertently target and impact healthy cells.

Rishab developed and tested his algorithm using images of the human digestive system, and found it could correctly detect the pancreas with a 98.9 percent success rate. The innovation aims to improve accuracy, reduce invasiveness and increase efficiency during treatment, resulting in better quality of life and chance for survival among patients.

A seventh-grader at Stoller Middle School in Portland, Ore., Rishab competed alongside nine other finalists during a live competition at the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minn. He was awarded the title of “America’s Top Young Scientist” and received a $25,000 prize

Read the full article about the seventh grader using AI to improve pancreatic cancer treatment at 3M.