15-year-old Ethiopian student, Heman Bekele has invented a soap that could treat and prevent multiple forms of skin cancer.
Heman was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He migrated to the United States with his family when he was 4-year-old.
At the age of 7, he started watching Chemistry tutorials online. Heman would then started conducting his own science experiments.
He would mix up whatever he could get his hands on at home and waiting to see if the resulting would turn into anything.
“They were just dish soap, laundry detergent, and common household chemicals,” he says today of the ingredients he’d use. “I would hide them under my bed and see what would happen if I left them overnight. There was a lot of mixing together completely at random.”
Before his 7th birthday, his parents gave him a chemistry set that came with a sample of sodium hydroxide, a gift which change the course of his innovation.
Heman learned that aluminum and sodium hydroxide can together produce prodigious amounts of heat.
This new discovery got him thinking about creating a solution that could change humanity’s fate.
“I thought that this could be a solution to energy, to making an unlimited supply,” he says. “But I almost started a fire.”
Heman started developing a soap that could treat and prevent multiple forms of skin cancer.
He made the soap that has nanoparticles at the age of 14. It helps ensure that the drug stays on the skin even after washing.
Heman says coming to the United States ignited the idea.
“When I was younger, I didn’t think much of it, but when I came to America, I realized what a big problem the sun and ultraviolet radiation is when you’re exposed to it for a long time,” Heman says.
Heman’s cancer soap would be a lot more affordable than the $40,000 it typically costs for skin-cancer treatment.
“What is one thing that is an internationally impactful idea, something that everyone can use, [regardless of] socioeconomic class?” Heman recalls thinking. “Almost everyone uses soap and water for cleaning. So soap would probably be the best option.”
In October last year he was selected by the 3M company and Discovery Education as the winner of its Young Scientist Challenge, winning $25,000 as a prize.
Heman is spending part of every weekday working in a lab at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, hoping to bring his dream to fruition.
“I’m really passionate about skin-cancer research,” he says, “whether it’s my own research or what’s happening in the field. It’s absolutely incredible to think that one day my bar of soap will be able to make a direct impact on somebody else’s life. That’s the reason I started this all in the first place.”
In August this year, Heman was named TIME’s Kid of the Year for his life-saving invention.