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Bio

Jack Andraka (Stanford B.S/B.A in Electrical Engineering with Honors and Anthropology with Honors) is a National Geographic Explorer who speaks to audiences of youths and adults all across the globe about his personal story, research, and his ideas for STEM education reform and fostering innovation and creativity. His journey began at age fifteen when, after losing a close family friend to pancreatic cancer, he invented an inexpensive early detection method for pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancer that costs 3 cents and takes 5 minutes to run. Now completing his MS in Electrical Engineering at Stanford, Andraka conducts research on nanorobots, inexpensive biosensors, disease diagnostics, and global health interventions while serving as faculty at the Stanford Anesthesiology Summer Institute. Outside of research, Jack has worked on combining anthropology, engineering, and big data to address pressing global health challenges, particularly in the monitoring of environmental contaminants and disease outbreaks. His latest work involves utilizing inexpensive paper biosensors to crowdsource environmental monitoring in Tanzania and track COVID-19 and other epidemics through wastewater.

Andraka’s groundbreaking results have earned him international recognition, most notably the 2018 Truman Scholar Award, the 2014 Jefferson Award, the nation’s most prestigious public service award, the Intel Science Fair Winner for 2012, the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, the Out 100, White House Champion of Change in Open Science, Time Magazines 30 under 30, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Goalkeeper, and Advocate Magazine’s 40 under 40 award.

Keynote Topics

Keynote #1 : A New Approach to Health

Jack discusses a new paradigm of health, one where patients and healthcare providers collaborate to create a health experience tailored to the patient’s needs. He brings together the latest, cutting-edge research with his own experience and work to detail how to pioneer this new patient-doctor relationship through a diverse collection of stories and lessons learned from COVID-19, Ebola, the U.S. healthcare system, and global health interventions. Jack also discusses how new technologies such as 3D printing, real-time genetic sequencing, and molecular diagnostics will factor into this holistic version of health and how to use these technologies to personalize a patient’s health experience.

Keynote #2 : Innovation and Exploration

In this talk, Jack tells his own unlikely story of how he – a high school student who didn’t know what a pancreas was- created a new way to detect early-stage pancreatic cancer for 3 cents in 5 minutes. He then discusses his current work as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer working on issues ranging from crowdsourcing environmental monitoring in Tanzania to investigating the causes of the Ebola epidemic. Jack then reveals how anyone can become an explorer and learn how to change the world around them through passion and perseverance.

Call or text Neal at (720) 498 -3275 or email neal@infinitespeakers.com to place a calendar hold or book Jack for your next event today.