WOODCLIFF LAKE, N.J.—The Davidson Institute for Talent Development has announced that resident Varun Kumar, 18, is one of 20 recipients nationally of its 2019 Davidson Fellows Scholarship.
Kumar won a $50,000 scholarship for his project Dihydrotanshinone: A Pan-Therapeutic Treatment for Chemoresistance in Cancer.
“I am honored to be named a Davidson Fellow, as it validates my research efforts on drug resistance in aggressive cancers and motivates me to continue pursuing my goals,” Kumar said in a press release.
“I look forward to meeting like-minded peers and learning as much from them as I have from my project,” he added.
Kumar developed a combination therapy that may help reverse resistance to Temozolomide, a drug commonly used to treat glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive type of brain tumor in adults.
His research offers a way to enhance the efficacy of current chemotherapies, improving outcomes for patients with aggressive cancers, and may represent a promising therapeutic option for highly aggressive cancers with a way to amplify existing chemotherapies.
The Davidson Institute for Talent Development said Kumar’s model could serve as a cost effective and accessible way for other researchers to confirm that a drug has potential to reach the brain, improving the efficiency of the brain disease drug pipeline.
He is a recent graduate of Bergen County Academies, a public magnet school in Hackensack.
He has taken courses in research, pharmacology, organic chemistry, botany, and more. He is incredibly appreciative of the unique STEM experience he has had at his high school, as well as the in-house research program where he completed his project on drug resistance in cancer.
He also participated in his school’s Senior Experience program, in which he was a part of an Alzheimer’s disease team at a pharmaceutical company.
For his project, Kumar has been recognized as a Regeneron Science Talent Search Finalist, ISEF Third Grand Award winner, JSHS Finalist, AAN Neuroscience Research Prize Finalist, and AACR Annual Meeting poster presenter.
He is a Simons Fellow and participated in the Simons Summer Research Program at Stony Brook University.
Kumar also has two first-author publications in the journals Anticancer Research and Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy. He will attend Yale University in the fall to study molecular biology and data science.
Beyond science, Kumar enjoys tennis, swimming, tutoring elementary school students, and watching stand-up comedy in his free time.
He said he eventually sees himself “leading a biotech or medtech company, improving the quality of life for others with AI, data science, and medical research.”
Asked if he could have dinner with the five most interesting people in the world, living or dead, he said they would be Hasan Minhaj, Daniel Kahneman, Indra Noori, Leonardo DaVinci, and Abraham Lincoln.
The 2019 Davidson Fellows will be honored at a reception in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 27.
The Davidson Fellows Scholarship program offers $50,000, $25,000, and $10,000 college scholarships to students 18 or younger who have completed significant projects that have the potential to benefit society in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, literature and music.
The Davidson Fellows Scholarship has provided more than $7.5 million in scholarship funds to more than 300 students since its inception in 2001 and has been named one of the most prestigious undergraduate scholarships by U.S. News & World Report.
It is a program of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a national nonprofit organization headquartered in Reno, Nevada that supports profoundly gifted youth.
Founded by Bob Davidson in 1999, the Davidson Institute for Talent Development recognizes, nurtures and supports profoundly intelligent young people, and provides opportunities for them to develop their talents to make a positive difference.
The Institute offers support through several programs and services including the Davidson Fellows Scholarship and the Davidson Academy of Nevada.