January 31, 2007
17 Year Old Desi Girl Makes Scientific BreakthroughScience and Technology
Madhavi Gavini is a student at a math/science high school in Mississippi, the Mississippi Institute of Math and Science. 
At age 14 she got interested in cystic fibrosis, especially the lung infections that kill many people suffering from CF:
It was that thirst for knowledge that drove Madhavi to search for a way to help a friend with cystic fibrosis. “I found out that most people who have CF die of pseudomonas infections,” she recalls, “so I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help.” She was 14 at the time. “I guess the thought that a 14-year-old can’t really do much to help, didn’t really occur to me,” she says with a shrug.
Pseudomonas bacteria — in addition to killing people with cystic fibrosis — can cause deadly secondary infections in people with immune-suppressing conditions such as AIDS, cancer and severe burns. This opportunistic pathogen forms a thick, protective layer around itself, making it nearly impossible for antibiotics to penetrate and destroy it. (link)
That’s the background. Interestingly, the technique she used to find a way to kill the Pseudomonas bacteria started with Ayurvedic medicine:
With an herb book from her grandparents as her guide, Madhavi sampled common grocery store and green houseplants, such as cinnamon, ginger and aloe. She obtained a strain of pseudomonas bacteria from the local university and began subjecting the germs to various plant extracts.
One of the common tropical plant extracts penetrated the bacterium’s protective layer. Next, Madhavi isolated the specific molecule in the extract that was able to inhibit bacterial growth. She found that the molecule was heat resistant, and resistant to pressure. “It kills the cell,” she explains, “by preventing the transcription of the genes involved in energy, metabolism, adaptation, membrane transport, and toxin secretion.” (link)
The herb she started with, incidentally, is Terminalia Chebula, known in Sanskrit as Haritaki. As for which molecule exactly kills the biofilm that protects the Pseudomonas, the coverage I’ve read doesn’t say.
Wow.
amardeep on January 31, 2007 07:45 AM in Science and Technology · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
Kudos to young Ms. Gavini. Were I still in high school, I can guarantee that my parents would be telling me about this at the dinner table.
I'm pretty sure my parents will be telling me about this at the dinner table the next time I'm home -- and I'm 32!
Wow indeed. Not just smart, the kid has heart too.
call me a supergeek...but she is an an intel science winner as well..these people were my idols growing up...back to the days when it was called the westinghouse scholarship.. how i found out about it? when chetan nayak won, and was on the cover of us news and world report back in 1988...
As AliG would say much respect.
I wonder why we did not pick this news item up before? She was an ISEF winner (as chickpea pointed out) in May of last year. News coverage still biased against science geeks I guess. Everybody knows about the spelling bee winners.
wow, indeed. great stuff!! I wonder which supermarket she got the Haritaki from? :p
(Siemens Science Competition link)
More desi kids representing (Madhavi too).
I found it when I did a search for "Indian American" in News.google.com this morning. Perhaps earlier news coverage of her various awards and research didn't use that phrase.
I wouldn't expect much interest in the western media over this -- too obscure. But this ought to be a big story in the Indian media in particular -- especially given the recent controvery about Ayurveda.
And what is Chetan Nayak doing today? A freaking full prof. at UCLA. That's pretty damn good!
http://www.cogito.org/Util/PrintDetail.aspx?ContentId=15596
Mummy and Daddy's home pages.
Like the majority of Westinghouse Science Talent Search entrants,
she went to a well-funded specialized magnet high school
and had the resources of a world-class research institution at her disposal.
I'm not impressed by privilege.
Let me know when an amateur Desi kid scientist with a DIY garage setup makes the press instead of getting arrested.
Also from the link
While Madhavi could become a millionaire by patenting her work, she has something else in mind: making it openly available. She points out, "If I were going to patent this, the rights would have to be sold to a pharmaceutical company, and that would greatly increase the cost of the drug once it's developed. So to prevent that from happening, by publishing it, the information becomes readily available and any company that wants to manufacture it, would be able to. So the price would be much lower due to competition and the people who need it most will have access to it."
Thats great.
yeah, when i saw that nayak came from either stuyvesant or bronx science, and most of the intel geeks are from super science backgrounds/schools, i was envious...as i rotted away in our lab in a public school that didn't even have AP science classes... oh well... it's all good... everything has a tendency to work out in the end...
Amardeep,
I guess that was my point. We (at SM) sometimes tend to follow the herd when it comes to coverage of issues (spelling bees, kal penn, shilpa shetty, monica bhardwaj etc) and winners of prestigious science competitions seem to get overlooked.
Enbee, I totally agree with you in that I am not impressed by privilege either. BUT, I gotta say the girl does have heart to go along with those brains and money. (How may of us can say that when we experimented with herbs in our younger days this was not exactly the end result?!) My best friend in the world had CF and it's a pretty rough thing to deal with for a kid so any advances in finding a cure are much appreciated. Hopefully this kid won't become some jaded adult scientist. I have a lot of respect for her.
jay, yeah i concur...
Magnet schools are not easy to get into. They are not private schools and are highly competitive. The Mississippi one she went to is a free school.
You don't have to be impressed by privilege. Just the hard work.
Stop your hating.
I totally agree with ScienceGroupie.. a magnet school is still a public school, the kids have to work hard & write an entrance exam to get into a school like Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech etc.. and then they have to work really hard to compete within the system. Schools like these actually give kids of mid/low economic backgrounds an equal playing ground in excelling & access to many opportunities within their discipline of choice, that their local neighbourhoods/parents would not be able to provide.
Mississippi State is a world-class research institution? I grant you it was where Mom and Dad worked. But privilege? I've never been south of Richmond myself, but can anyone imagine having, such a, er, melanin-rich phenotype down there and being privileged?
I wasn't going to touch that one. At all.
Previous comment still holds...no hating!
So does this make up for Kavita?
Absolutely. It depends in part on what flavor of melanin you be rockin', though let's also not forget the substantial African-American middle class/upper middle class in Atlanta. Also, the overall level of poverty (both black and white) in a state like Mississippi is such that it doesn't take millions of dollars to be privileged.
As for Mississippi State, why can't it be world-class? It's quite common that a state university is very good in some specific disciplines. I don't know about MS State, but in Alabama for instance, the Univ of Al at Birmingham (home of the UAB Blazers with the cool dragon logo, for those of you who dig college hoop) is a top science school now, and it isn't even the mothership of the UA system. To summarize, as ScienceGroupie said, : don't hate.
I deal with CF on a daily basis and Pseudomonas is a big problem due to biofilm production. This is good news, but like with most drugs will take time (years) to develop.
Her achievements are what they are and should be celebrated regardless of whether she went to a private school, a public school, or was home schooled. Privilege may get one's foot in the door, but one is entirely responsible for walking through it.
Curcurmin, found in tumeric, is also showing promise with the Na channel defect in CF that is responsible for the thick dry secretions CF pt's have to suffer with.
Big ups to Madhavi. Much Res-peckt! Boo-yaah-ka-shah
she should be commended.. no matter where she went to school.. it takes a lot of hard work, sweat, and tears to get to where she is now... kudos...
err.. do you mean kaavya? nothing makes up for own selfish self-imposed fiasco... madhavi cannot even be compared..
I understand it can be really difficult and I am sorry you have to deal with it, my friend went through a lot too. I agree with you, I am glad to see that there is something, even if it is small and years away from actual implementation, being done.
Hell yes.Yes, Kaavya. Sorry.
Amardeep,
You may find this related NY Times article "Unhappy meals" interesting. I call it related, because, just as yoga is not mere exercise, ayurveda is not merely medicine. (The article talks about reductionism and specifically mentions nutrients in the context of diet, diet in the context of lifestyle etc). Good ayurvedic pratitioners therefore, do not isolate components as much as prescribe changes in diet/lifestyle in addition to herbs that contain those vital components.
Interesting differences in approach!
Not hating, but in cases like these I have to wonder how much of the research was actually mommy/daddy's and the child just acted as a 'research assistant.' How does a 14 year old develop a research methodology etc etc. I am skeptical after watching how one close relative became an intel finalist.
OK. Privilege does not operate on any one dimension alone, but still, certain visible markers can overwhelm other things in specific circs. Otherwise the Citibank VP in a Brooks Brothers suit (who just 'happens' to be Af-Am) not getting cabs in Manhattan wouldn't be such a big deal, would it.
The question is not whether it can be, but whether it is. And if somehow it isn't, that only makes what Madhavi did using its facilities that much more impressive in my book. This has nothing to do with being located south of the Mason-Dixon, there are plenty of world class medical research centers in the South.Right on. My earlier comment was to suggest that it would be difficult to interpret her situation as being privileged, nor might Miss State be 'world class', so that her achievement is solidly impressive. Of course, it is still impressive even if the other two things were true. Thanks for letting me clarify.
Wow....
I was struggling through puberty when I was 14.
Just a quick correction. It's not "Mississippi Institute of Math and Science", but the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science. Glad to see the #50th state in the spotlight for something positive for once. Incidentally, it was one of the nation's first residential, public schools for the gifted (the 1st one was the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics).
wanted to give my props to this young girl. i haven't a doubt she had the analytical mind to pull this off herself. and as for privilege. well yeah of course she had the opportunity provided by surrounding. that doesn't take away from her accomplisment.
This has nothing to do with being located south of the Mason-Dixon, there are plenty of world class medical research centers in the South.
Chachaji,
There are some world class Universities in South, period. Not some medical centers. Some examples:
1) Rice U.
2) UT, Austin
3) Texas A & M
4) LSU
5) Georgia Tech
6) Emory
In fact, Southern Universities are in massive growth mode, especially UT (Austin), Texas A & M, and LSU
You would be surprised that Mississippi State with its proximity to NASA Stennis Space Center has some world research class facilities, and collaboration. Stennis Space Center has extemely close tie with MSU, like NASA Goddard Space Center has with DC area Universities.
Respectfully Yours,
Gandu Bhanja
Let's not forget Duke, Tulane, and Vanderbilt from that list.
Whether the Lone Star State is actually part of the South is a matter of timeless and protracted debate. Personally I subscribe to the view that East Texas is part of the South, but west of Houston and Dallas is not. But there are many other views, backed by various arguments about demographics, economics and resource base, linguistic, folkways etc.
Wow is right. I'm speechless. She is so totally amazing.
tiggs said:
High school students that I have had interaction with in a lab have ranged from resume padders to ambitious, cause you to rip your hair out, type As who are always annoying you by asking questions (and are usually very bright). She seems to have risen to the top so she is probably is not in the first category.
The work done was very straight forward. All completely within her grasp. I don't think there is a need to worry about too much hand holding. I assume she'd be expected to answer questions about her research as well, so she'd have to know more about it than a trained droid. She is competing with others at her level anyway. I am sure the expectations are realistic.
Hi Kush,
Not sure whether your animus derives from my choice of moniker or something I said! My point, to make it again, is not whether Miss State is or isn't 'world class', but that even if it is, that doesn't diminish Madhavi's achievement. I was responding to someone who implied otherwise. Of course, if it isn't ('world class') then her achievement is greater still (in my book).
I'm done with this.
Peace
I wonder if Abhi knew him... Chick Pea! When you move out here, we can try to make Sepia Destiny happen between the two of you. Can you imagine the first date? "Chetan, OMG, I was like your biggest fan when I saw you on the cover of US News and World Report back in 1988!"
Just teasing, Chick Pea! ;-)
***
And to reiterate what's been said already on this amazing desi girl-- "Wow!"
i think this girl is awesome and inspiring-- i hope she keeps reaching greater heights!
you just made me roll around in my bowl... ;)... alas, i never ever knew he was at ucla when i was there.. but he is married... but heck he can still be invited to a sm meetup... i'll get the magazine signed... (geekiness to it's full extent)
Wow! Lets not hate on such amazing achievement. You dont see any of the Hilton sisters curing cancer. Give props were props are due.
I'm sure they're working on it :P
Yeah, seriously, what's up with the hating? If Mommy & Daddy helped her out, they'll have to stop at some point. Lots of people are equally priveleged and do nothing with it. Kudos to her for taking maximum advantage. It's much more annoying when such opportunities are wasted.
Y'all are just jealous b/c y'all didn't listen to your parents when they suggested Ayurveda as a science project, and y'all were too busy publishing edgy zines to apply to the Westinghouse Project. I, on the other hand, freely admit my mistakes, even if I do it in the second person. :-)
Also, ahem, private schools are also frequently quite competitive.
The real point is not that she's not all that--she is all that--but how can we make sure that other kids who are also all that have access to similar opportunities. Instead of hating I suggest we make it a point to help our local schools and community groups in opening up lab access. That would be local science museums (think Exploratorium, Chabot, Lawrence Hall of Science, Lindsay Museum, Museum of Tech and Innovation in the Bay Area) and groups like the Algebra Project. A lot of kids don't even have a garage to mess around in, let alone good school labs or access to college facilities.
This is actually something I'm seriously very interested in, so if you are too, let me know. Saheli AT gmail.
Wow that's so fab. :) *jealous* When I was a highschool student I never had access to such facilities...
actually, Saheli, I work for a non-profit in the bay area and one of the four programs I run for at-risk youth involves helping low-income girls of color build interest in math and science! it's called TechGYRLS and is part of the Racial Justice Program. if anyone is interested in helping out, please contact racialjustice@ywca-berkeley.org
thanks!
Kush :)
That list should read as follows
1. UT Austin
2. Rice U.
Lim_n tending to infinity n+2. Texas A&M
Chacha ji,
I have no animus.
My moniker was more having fun.
I do not think MSU is a world class institute, but as Siddhartha, said, often some State Schools, or lesser known Schools while overall might be subpar, but they have pockets of highest order excellence due to proximity, pork, historical reasons, and all that. In MSU, Stennis Space Center and Trent Lott has played role in few of their things. One has to understand such complexity.
It is like weak little guy have killer biceps but overall is no athlete. This happens more than you know.
DDiA,
Not so fast, Orangeblood :-)
I would prefer:
Lim_n ----> infinity [(1/n)+1]. Texas A&M
Regards,
Maroonblood
What?? You mean one cant get in just by paying exorbitant tuition to get into this elite club?? How unfair!!! Shame on these anti-capitalist people !!!
Bravo!!! Great job by the young prodigy.Coffeface,
Fortunately I do not have CF, I just deal with the patient's who do and those who have undergone lung transplants as a result of it. It's a frustrating existence for these kids, spending many of the productive years of their youth in and out of hospitals receiving IV antibiotics. So if Madhavi's research pays off this will be terrific.
MD Anderson is in the same league if not better thought of than Sloan Kettering.
UT Southwestern in Dallas, TX has more Nobel Laureates than any other medical school in the US. (Suck on that Harvard and Hopkins)
Wow, tough crowd.
I hope she enjoyed herself on this project, I see no reason to automatically assume that she didn't do significant work on the project by herself, and if she was helped out a bit, what of it? She's young and a student, I presume (look, who has time to really read these links? Please :) ). She's not supposed to be a fully-formed independent scientist at this point.
When it comes to elite versus non-elite institutions, I take a pragmatic view, having been at a wide variety of academic institutions throughout my training and career, some which are called elite, some of which are not, and some of which really elite, at least in my experience of them. You have to decide, for yourself, what you want out of your education and career. Not all institutions will be right for you, the individual. What is the field of study you are interested in, who will your mentors be, what is the department like, etc. What is elite anyway? Nobel prize winners in the lab, to which you may have some access? A huge endowment? Some of which might actually be spent on you? Lots of NIH money? Good teaching? Good undergraduate teaching? It's not that I don't believe in such a thing as an elite institution, it's just that your experience at said institution may or may not be at the level of excellence. Personally, I think the main thing is to be trained/educated by smart people who are not a-holes. And, that, my friends, is much harder to find that simply looking for a brand name......although, sometimes a brand name does mean quality! So, I'm not hatin', in the lingo of the times, I'm just a cynic.
Oh, and to follow up on Asha's Dad's point: I think some of the traditional elite med schools (hey, I'm in Boston and believe me, that's what they think they are, so I'm just quoting) are going to, and are, facing stiff competition from places where they can pay better, cost of living is better, and junior faculty are treated not as a commodity, but as talent to be nurtured. Ahem.
Yep.
We know what happened in the turmeric case. if Madhavi files a patent it would be nothing less than bio-piracy. The knowledge does not belong to Madhavi Gavini, but the trial and error processes of many generations. Her identification of the particular molecule that inhibits bacterial growth will be useful to convince people that all this is scientific. We need more such initiatives in India. Unfortunately, the pseudo-secularists will immediately label it as Vedic science and what not, without even trying to create institutions that will help protect collective wisdom (and weed out superstitious belief too). Indeed, patent laws are the most glaring manifestations of culture. India has always practiced collective wisdom, while US patents try to promote individual claims over knowledge. We need to spread more awareness about the shady deals of the WTO. And these are the issues that are of real importance.
Arundhati Roy was bang on when she said:
"For all the endless, empty chatter about democracy, today the world is run by three of the most secretive institutions in the world: The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, all three of which, in turn, are dominated by the U.S."
She is labeled as a leftist, when if you do not read her with a jaundiced eye, she is actually fighting for atomized markets - she is on the extreme right.
Interestingly, the turmeric patent became a fight between Indians themselves. At one side was these two non-resident Indians and at the other was CSIR. And these two non-resident Indians were associated with the University of Mississipi Medical Centre, Jackson, USA.
The funny part is this: ultimately it becomes an issue of location. Those who think Democrats will bring in change, will ultimately be fighting for American farmers. Subsidies for American farmers will mean more cotton suicides in Vidarbha, Maharashtra. And the money-smelling diaspora - please no ad hominems here, this is a genuine, practical problem - have to think who is eligible for their compassion.
Well said!
More details about the turmeric patent story and the chronology here.
So the good affects of Karakkai kashayam told by my G~Pa is all true? Darn, can I have some of that please :)
MD - Just some playful smack talk. You make some good points. Often an institution will produce good clinicians but does not have a large amount of NIH grants or endowment that put them in the top of the US News and Wrold Report Rankings. Us big southern' dummies just have a little bit of a chip on our shoulders when it comes to our esteemed colleagues from the North. Likely similar to Tufts and BU versus the Harvard heavyweight of Man's Greatest Hospital/ THE Brigham (note if you want to be a great institution you have to preceed yourself with THE, as in THE Brigham, THE Mayo, THE Cleveland Clinic, THE BI...))
Brown and Goldstein (statin fame) do lecture to the first year medical school biochem class (1-2 lectures each) and Gilman (G protein) used to lecture for 2 weeks during the pharmacology class, although I don't know if he still does now that he became dean. Needless to say this is the selling point by the medical school, "4 Nobel Laureates....blah blah".
Academic prestige
always egualsclinical excellence.Oh and MD, no state income tax in Texas!!! Check out UTSW.
Naiverealist - Excellent points. A little chaos theory in action. Most of us, myself included remain blissfully unaware of the consequences of our everyday actions (shopping at Walmart for instance) on people half way around the world. I'm sure you've seen this movie, The Fourth World War. It's definitely a leftist point of view but well done nonetheless.
I'm going to listen to some Radiohead now and pretend that I understand the lyrics.
Asha's Dad:Understood :) I'm mostly talking some smack,too. I am a faculty brat, grew up in a college town, and love Lucky Jim's (Kingsley Amis) take-down of a certain type of intellectual wannabe, so I am hard to impress, academically. I kinda hate everything, as my previous comments here attest.
Actually, I have lot of respect for the varied institutions in this town and for the many talented physicians who work in them, I just can't stand people who are so provincial they have no idea of the quality of work being done around the country. But I digress....
Yeah, what is Radiohead ever saying, anyway?
i just felt like chiming in after 2 md's... ;)...
and to chirp into the nobel laureate talk.. my pharm prof won when he was in the midst of teaching me.. he had won the best teacher of the year award 10 years prior.. refreshing to see a person who can balance both poles without falling or teetering on one side more than the other....
Smart and pretty girl. Go Madhavi!
Actually Dallas county demographic is 36 % White persons non hispanic, 36% hispanic origin and 20% African Americans. Dallas county almost always votes Blue. demographic data here.
I live in the burbs and there are more churches than there are democrats here :-)
Madhavi- Wow! @ #11- nice to see some people do consider 'the greater good' Seconding Asha's Dad-thanks for the links/insight Naiverealist.
This article reminds me of Kavita Shukla who placed at ISEF a couple years ago by experimenting with another ayurvedic herb: fenugreek
http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/shukla.html
i love radiohead!!
on a more related note, i think it is wonderful that madhavi is setting a such an awesome example for young people everywhere. once again, she rocks.
as a desi, science teacher, and alumna of a sister school to madhavi's, i say rock on, chica.
for the haters -- what does privilege have to do with whether or not we congratulate her for making a scientific breakthrough? it's one that could possibly be shared widely and help a lot of people; should we just ignore it because it wasn't made by someone from a lower socioeconomic background?
for the doubters -- the mississipi school for math and science, along with its sister schools in NC, CA, IL, NE, IN etc. have state of the art science facilities where the type of research madhavi conducted is far from fantasy. the schools are *publicly* funded and admissions are based on academic promise, not mummy and daddy's wallet.
A friend of mine already lost her daughter to CF, and after reading Asha'sDad have decided better not forward this.
Naiverealist, you are so cogent to say:
Yet now that you bring this up, it seems the collective wisdom aspect is probably why Madhavi will NOT file a patent. She, and possibly her parents too, is/are not only generous but wise and true to their cultural roots too. Brava!
I salute hard working desi teens, kids and adults like her. They appear to be more intellectual and smarter than the average person. They are very industrious and hard working too. However, she and most of the high schoolers (who have found the "Cure for cancer", etc) do have a mom or dad (or both) that have connections. These connections will help the student get access to labs, professors that most people would never know even exists. There are some very smart talented people that are "undiscovered" and may stay that way due to their situation, etc. There is no doubt though, that working on a very impressive science project that is good enough for the Intel competition (and others like that) will open doors for the budding scientists/researchers and their careers. I just wish that everyone had the same opportunity.
I am madhavi's roommate at MSMS,and she is amazing. She developed the project herself, mostly without any outside help. She is truly an amazing individual and I am lucky to be friends with her.
^^^ coolest SM comment ever. Thanks Britny!
Siddhartha:
Maybe a post made up of the coolest and lamest SM comments ever is in order. (I'm sure I'll make one of those lists.)
amardeep, thanks for posting this. she rocks!
I really hope my parents don't know about this. I'll never hear the end of it.
Amardeep--props for posting; and bigger props to the child prodigy, damn that blows it outta the water.
great post dude.
I agree. When i was trynna ID the cause of sars and the way to prevent sars and produce a cure perhaps to those that has it.a vacine, i had gotten a nice trip to the principals office wit a long ass lecture. All though i was scared to tell my parents about it, but i couldnt do anything. Im not envyin the girl, shes smart and god bless her. But there are alot of other desis
that have the smarts but not the eqiptments or the environment before gettin called to the office or piled with threats.
I"m frankly stunned that no one has even considered trying an extract or even the whole form of the ayurvedic herb that contained the chemical that killed the pseudomonas. Perhaps a drug isn't necessary? One would think this entire thread is populated by pharmaceutical reps!
I am the mother of a girl with pseudomonas and would be interested in learning whom I could contact
for possible treatment. Has anyone actually been cured. Congraulations to Mahdavi Gavini. You give us
hope.