In high school, many young people are simply trying to adjust to teenage life as they deal with the awkwardness of their own bodies. But then there are other teens who tackle major medical problems like cancer, influenza, and other deadly diseases that have plagued humans throughout history. While it is impressive that some young people attempt to study these topics, these teens went further and even made incredible breakthroughs in the medical field.

10 Ethan Manuell

In the spring 2015, eighth grader Ethan Manuell of Rochester, Minnesota, was visiting his oncologist. Since the age of four, he had been wearing a hearing aid in his left ear. That’s how he was struck with inspiration for his entry in his school’s science fair.

Manuell wanted to know how air affects the zinc batteries for hearing aids. When changing the battery in a hearing aid, a tab or a sticker over the area that connects to the hearing aid has to be removed. Manuell found some old toy bugs and converted them to run on the same type of batteries that are used in hearing aids. Then, through a series of trials, Manuell discovered that the batteries lasted 85 percent longer if they were exposed to air for five minutes. The longer battery life could give people who wear hearing aids an extra day or two of use out of their batteries and save an average of $70 per year. Manuell also took home the top prize at his school’s science fair for his “five minute rule.”

9 Tony Hansberry

Many 14-year-old boys probably don’t know what a hysterectomy is, but Tony Hansberry was no ordinary 14-year-old. When Hansberry was in high school, he developed a new, faster, and safer way to stitch patients up after the procedure.

Hansberry, who attended a special magnet school that specializes in health and medicine, said he got the idea when he was an intern at a hospital in summer 2008 as part of the University of Florida’s Center for Simulation Education and Safety Research. While working with the center’s administrative director, Hansberry figured out a way to use an endo stitch, which is a stick with two clamps on it that is used for suturing. Hansberry used the endo stitch vertically; it had previously only been used horizontally. Hansberry’s new method makes it easier to close the opening after the uterus is removed and speeds up stitching time. Now that his technique has been made public, it is used by gynecologists during surgery.

Hansberry is currently studying biomedical engineering at Florida A&M University and said that he wants to be a neurosurgeon.

8 Suman Mulumudi

Around the dinner table one night at Suman Mulumudi’s home in Seattle, his parents, who are both doctors, talked about troubles they had in their day. Mulumudi’s father, a cardiologist, complained that his stethoscope didn’t work as well as he wanted it to. When there was a weak heartbeat, his father would order an echocardiogram for the patient, but echocardiograms take time and are quite expensive. So, 15-year-old Mulumudi got the idea that could help his father. Using a 3-D printer, he created a device to attach to a smartphone and developed a stethoscope app. The final product is called “Steth IO.” The product turned out to be better than a stethoscope on two counts. It sounded better, and there was also a visual graph of the sound on the screen.

But that wasn’t the last medical invention Mulumudi created. The second of his inventions aids in angioplasties, procedures that clear blocked or narrowed arteries. During the procedure, lesions need to be propped up with stents. Placing these stents is a difficult task because doctors have to estimate how big the lesions are. If there is a mistake, it can lead to repeated trips to the hospital to fix the problem. To better measure lesions, Mulumudi developed LesionSizer, another device he made using a 3-D printer. It helps cardiologists measure lesions without changing or altering their technique.

After creating the Steth IO, Mulumudi appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in May 2014. Mulumudi now attends the prestigious private Lakeside School in Seattle. Famous graduates of the school include Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

7 Elana Simon

As a child, Elana Simon of New York suffered from horrible stomach aches. She went to a number of specialists, but no one was sure what was wrong until she was 12 years old. That was when she was diagnosed with fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma, a rare form of liver cancer.

Simon survived, but she was one of the lucky ones. Only 32 percent of people who are diagnosed with that type of cancer survive past five years. A major problem with the disease is that by the time it is diagnosed, the cancer has usually already spread. Research on the disease has also been fairly limited because of its rareness. Only about 60 cases are diagnosed every year in the United States, and it mostly affects women under the age of 35.

In 2013, when Simon was 18, she was looking into an internship for high school. She came up with the idea to genetically sequence fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma cells to find the cancer-causing mutation. Working with her surgeon, she got others who suffered from the cancer to send samples of their tumors. Using the 15 samples, the genes were sequenced. When they looked at the results, they found that in all 15 samples there was a chimera—two genes that connect and create a unique protein. More research needs to be done to see if the chimera is actually responsible, but the progress looks promising.

In February 2014, a paper that was co-authored by Simon was published in the prestigious journal Science. Simon also appeared on The Dr. Oz Show and met President Obama. Currently, Simon is studying computer sciences at Harvard University.

6 Jack Andraka

Pancreatic cancer has one of the highest mortality rates of any cancer because it spreads quickly. Samples need to be sent to a lab, which takes time. Even when samples do finally get to the lab, the testing method is over 60 years old and isn’t very reliable. This really bothered 14-year-old Jack Andraka from Baltimore, Maryland, who lost a close family friend to the disease. He started searching the Internet for information about pancreatic cancer and tried to find out what its biomarkers were.

Once Andraka found the biomarkers, he formulated his plan and then he sent over 200 packages containing his method, budget, and timeline to cancer researchers around America. He received 199 rejection letters—some with intense criticism of his idea—but Dr. Anirban Maitra, the head of pancreatic cancer research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, agreed to help Andraka. Over the next seven months, after school and on weekends, Andraka developed a test that detects unusually high levels of mesothelin. Mesothelin is a protein that the body produces in the earliest and most treatable stages of pancreatic cancer. Andraka says that his tests can be done in five minutes, are much more accurate than traditional testing, and would only cost $50 instead of several hundred. Besides pancreatic cancer, the tests should also help in early detection of ovarian, breast, and lung cancer as well.

After the breakthrough was made public in 2012 when Andraka was 15, he was invited to the State of the Union speech by Michelle Obama. He also won the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, which is worth $100,000. The tests are currently in preclinical trials, and Andraka started attending Stanford in fall 2015.

5 Brittany Wenger

When Brittany Wenger of Sarasota, Florida, was in seventh grade, she said she fell in love with computer science. One aspect that caught her attention was artificial intelligence (AI). After learning about AI, she got a coding book and learned how to code. Another pivotal moment in Wenger’s life happened in 10th grade, when her cousin was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was during this time that she learned that one in eight women are diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes. Wenger was working on an artificial intelligence system that could play soccer at the time, but she changed paths. Instead, she decided to invent an AI system that could diagnose breast cancer.

While talking with her cousin, Wenger found out that the least invasive, cheapest, and fastest way to diagnose breast cancer is with fine needle aspirates (FNA). The problem is that they are not very accurate, so many doctors do not use them. To make FNA tests more effective, Wenger designed an AI program called Cloud4Cancer that processes samples from FNA tests and looks for patterns that are far too complex for humans to detect. Her program is 99.1 percent sensitive to malignancy, drastically increasing the reliability of FNA tests.

Wenger won the Google Science Fair in 2012, and she was also invited to the White House to meet President Obama. Wenger is attending Duke, and she wants to be both a pediatric oncologist and a research scientist.

4 Serena Fasano

In third world countries, diarrhea caused by E. coli is a devastating problem. On average, six million people die from it every year, and most of them are under the age of two. Thirteen-year-old Serena Fasano didn’t know that when she was sitting in her home in Howard County, Maryland, eating a yogurt in 2003. She was reading the ingredient list on the yogurt container when she came across one she didn’t recognize called lactobacillus, a form of bacteria. That kicked off her interest in bacteria in yogurt and led her to her first experiment for her school’s science fair. She used E. coli samples that her father, a director of the Mucosal Biology Research Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, procured for her. She mixed the samples into yogurt, and the results were that the samples with the most yogurt had the least amount of E. coli. The project landed her the top prize at her school and regionally, but that was just the start for Fasano.

Over the next three years, Fasano worked with a doctor at the Maryland School of Medicine to try to find out what exactly in yogurt killed E. coli. She discovered that the lactobacillus secretes a substance that is deadly to E. coli. She was able to break that substance down into five components and one of those, an undiscovered protein, seemed to cause the most harm to the E. coli. In February 2006, she was awarded a patent on the protein. Currently, Fasano is a family planning health educator in New York City.

3 Joe Landolina

In the United States, the leading cause of death for people under the age of 45 is trauma, while it is the fourth leading cause of death overall. A major reason that trauma is so deadly is because the internal organs can be lacerated. If there is an internal laceration, it is hard to stop the bleeding because life-saving measures like a tourniquet or applying pressure can’t be used on damaged internal organs.

Looking to solve the problem, 17-year-old Joe Landolina entered a business competition in 2011 at New York University as the only freshman competing against PhD and MBA candidates. His idea was to develop a type of organic gel or foam that would seal up wounds. His idea won, and over the next three years, Landolina worked on a plant-based gel that congeals when it is applied to blood or tissue. His product, called VetiGel, creates a mesh by using a key protein in blood clotting. Landolina’s gel can close an internal or external wound in 20 seconds or less. Also, since the gel is plant-based, it can be left in the body as it heals.

VetiGel is currently approved by the FDA for use on animals, but Landolina says it could be approved for use on humans in 2016. Lanolina hopes to have VetiGel available for widespread use, included in first aid kits worldwide.

2 Eric Chen

While the flu may remind people of staying home sick from school and watching The Price Is Right, the influenza virus is actually a lethal disease, and it is possible that a mutation could cause a plague at any given time. This realization dawned on Eric Chen in 2009 when he was just 13 years old. He was living in San Diego, and news about the H1N1 strain of the influenza virus was making headlines across the world. Wanting to make a difference, Chen developed a computer program to help him study biological data of the flu.

Chen was looking for inhibitors of a protein called “influenza endonuclease” that causes influenza to be contagious. Identifying and targeting these inhibitors would kill the virus because if the flu isn’t contagious, it isn’t effective. Using both the computer program he designed and a wet lab, Chen was able to whittle down half a million possible inhibitors to just six. Chen is hoping that antivirals will be developed based on his research that will help treat, cure, and even prevent outbreaks.

In 2013, when he was 17, Chen presented his findings and won the Google Science Fair, the Intel Science Talent Search, and the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology. He is currently attending Harvard for mathematics and computer science.

1 Angela Zhang

When Angela Zhang was a freshman at her high school in Cupertino, California, she started reading research papers about bio-engineering. The papers were a little complicated for Zhang, but she found that she enjoyed reading them because she felt like she was decoding a puzzle. By the time she was a sophomore, she was allowed to work in a lab at Stanford. Then, when she was a junior, she started her own research with a lofty goal—to cure cancer.

By the time she was a senior, Zhang had written her own research paper in her spare time with her own theory of how to cure cancer. Her idea was to mix cancer medicine with polymer. The polymer would be attached to nanoparticles. In turn, those nanoparticles would be injected into the body where they would attach to cancer cells. Then, when the patient underwent an MRI, doctors would see exactly where the tumors in the body are. Zhang believes that if an infrared light is fired at the tumors, the polymer will melt and release the medicine. This would kill the cancer cells without affecting healthy cells. And according to tests on mice, the tumors almost completely disappear.

In 2011, Zhang entered the National Siemens Math, Science, and Technology Competition and won the top prize, which was a $100,000 scholarship. In February 2012, at the age of 17, Zhang went to the White House Science Fair, where she presented her ideas to President Barack Obama.

Zhang is currently at Harvard, working on a degree in biomedical engineering. She also spends her summers at Stanford, where she continues to research her theory.

Robert Grimminck is a Canadian freelance writer. You can friend him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter or on Pinterest, or visit his website.

Many people were horrified at Adolf Hitler’s actions during World War II. Teenagers were no exception. Young people all around the world wanted to do anything they could to stop Hitler’s slaughter. The following 10 extraordinary teens risked their lives to fight Nazi ideology and save the persecuted.

10 Jack Lucas

Fourteen-year-old Jack Lucas was eager to go to war. He lied about his age and forged his mother’s signature on the enlistment papers. Lucas managed to qualify as a sharpshooter in the Marines. However, it did not take too long for the officers to realize that Lucas was underage. They threatened to send him home, but Lucas told them that he would just reenlist with the army. The Marines gave him a safe job: driving a transport truck in Hawaii.

Three years passed, and Lucas did not see combat. He worried that he never would. So Lucas stowed away on a ship bound for Iwo Jima and was soon fighting Japanese soldiers. Two grenades dropped into his trench. Lucas told his fellow Marines to run for it, and he dove on the grenades. One exploded.^[1]

Lucas barely survived the blast. He needed to have 26 operations to his repair his injuries. Even after his surgeries, Lucas still had more than 200 pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body. He was discharged from the Marines and awarded the Medal of Honor.

9 Zinaida Martynovna Portnova

Zinaida Portnova was 15 when the German army invaded Belarus. Her grandmother had an argument with one of the soldiers, and he hit her. This incident left Portnova with a deep hatred of the Nazis, and she joined an underground resistance movement.

Portnova began distributing Soviet propaganda, collecting weapons for Soviet troops, and reporting German troop movements. Within a year, she had learned how to use weapons and explosives. Portnova helped blow up several buildings, which killed over 100 Germans.

She started to work as a kitchen aide and poisoned food meant for German troops.^[2] Portnova immediately became a suspect. She proclaimed her innocence and ate some of the poisoned food. Portnova was released when she did not become sick.

However, she became extremely ill on her way home and barely recovered. When Portnova did not return to work, the Germans realized that she was the one who had poisoned them. They began to search for her.

Portnova became a scout and was captured on one of her missions. During her interrogation, she grabbed the Nazi officer’s gun and shot him and the other two soldiers. Although Portnova tried to escape, she was captured, tortured, and executed. She was 17.

8 Stefania Podgorska

Sixteen-year-old Stefania Podgorska (pictured above, right) went to work for a Jewish family, the Diamants, after her father died. She became close with the Diamants and moved in with them. Unfortunately, Hitler soon invaded Poland and the Diamants were forced into a ghetto.

Podgorska returned to her family’s home after her mother and brother were sent to work camps. She had to care for her six-year-old sister. The siblings were poor, and they had to sell clothes to feed themselves.

However, when Podgorska found out that people in the ghetto were going to die, she knew that she needed to help them. She offered to house several Jewish people—including Max Diamant, the son of her former employers. Podgorska was soon harboring 13 Jewish people.^[3]

She found a job at a factory and used the money to rent a bigger house. But it was still difficult to support 15 people. Podgorska started knitting sweaters for money and food, which she often had to buy on the black market. She lived in constant fear that someone would learn her secret, so she stopped talking to anyone outside her home.

German soldiers came into her home, and they told Podgorska that she had to leave the house within two hours. She refused to leave. Podgorska knew that if she left, all 13 Jewish people would die. Fortunately, the German soldiers never returned.

Eight months later, the Soviet army came and liberated Podgorska’s city. All the Jewish people were finally free after two and a half years of hiding. Max Diamant proposed to Podgorska. The two married and moved to the United States.

7 Simone Segouin

Eighteen-year-old Simone Segouin was determined to help rid France of the German army. She joined the French Resistance and started to hinder Nazis wherever she could. Her first mission was to steal a bicycle from a German soldier. She succeeded. The bike was repainted, and Segouin used it to deliver messages.

She soon took on more difficult missions. Her lieutenant asked her to help him blow up a bridge. Segouin was given a gun and ordered to guard the area against Germans. She did not have to fire a shot, but her lieutenant admired her bravery.^[4] So Segouin was permitted to do more dangerous jobs.

She joined her fellow resistance members when they blew up bridges and derailed trains. By the end of the war, Segouin had become a soldier. She fought in the battle to liberate Chartres, her hometown, and helped capture 25 German soldiers. Segouin joined the French troops in their march to Paris and helped liberate the French capital as well.

She was promoted to lieutenant and awarded the Croix de guerre for her heroism.

6 Bernard Bouveret

Bernard Bouveret was 16 when he joined the Swiss Secret Service. At first, he just passed mail and informed on German soldiers’ movements. However, he soon became a smuggler. He and 14 others transported grenades, gunpowder, microfilm, and people to Switzerland where they would be safe.

It was a dangerous job that needed to be done at night. However, there was a curfew between 11:00 PM and 5:00 AM. The German soldiers would shoot anyone they saw during this time. In fact, one of Bouveret’s friends was gunned down during a mission.

Nevertheless, Bouveret and his group continued to deliver fugitives to the Swiss border where they were housed with host families. These families helped the fugitives get deeper into Switzerland, where they could be housed in internment camps. Bouveret and his group saved hundreds of people.^[5]

Unfortunately, Bouveret was caught by the Germans in 1943. He was sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he remained until he was freed by the Allies in 1945.

5 Charlotte Sorkine

At 17, Charlotte Sorkine was the youngest member of her resistance group. She created thousands of false papers for people who were persecuted by the Nazis and led groups of wanted people out of the country. Sorkine helped her father escape the country. However, she decided to stay. She wanted to do everything she could to help fight the German soldiers.

After Marianne Cohn was arrested, tortured, and killed by the Nazis, Sorkine took on her duties. She helped bring dozens of children to Switzerland, where they would be safe. Sorkine continued to make papers and bring people to safety until many members of her resistance group were arrested.

Then she joined a different resistance group that focused on combat. Sorkine obtained and transported weapons, planted explosives in places where German soldiers met, and took an active part in the liberation of Paris.^[6]

After the war, Sorkine was given many awards for her actions, including the Medaille de la Resistance and the Croix du combattant volontaire de la Resistance.

4 Sonia Butt

Seventeen-year-old Sonia Butt joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force the day she became eligible for service. Within two years, she drew the attention of the Special Operations Executive, which was looking for potential female spies.

She parachuted into northern France to act as a go-between for Allied troops and the French Resistance. Butt was also responsible for finding out new information. She had to dine with German officers and flirt with them for information.

Butt was a specialist in explosives, and she used the intel she gained to blow up bridges and German convoys. After her unit’s weapons officer was killed, she took over his duties and trained new recruits in both weapons and explosives.^[7]

Her job had many dangers. She was ambushed by Germans on her way to deliver a message. They knocked her off her bicycle and questioned her. The soldiers beat her until she bled, and then they raped her. They left her bleeding on the ground, and she took shelter in a nearby barn. The next day, she delivered the information that she was carrying and returned the same way she had come.

After the war, Butt was awarded an MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). She married a fellow agent, and the pair moved to Canada.

3 Masha Bruskina

Seventeen-year-old Masha Bruskina was a member of the Minsk resistance. She volunteered at a hospital that took care of injured soldiers from the Red Army. Bruskina did more than care for the wounded. She helped soldiers escape by getting them civilian clothes and false identity papers.

One of her patients reported her to the Germans. Bruskina was captured and tortured for several days, but she refused to give up the names of other members of her group. She was sentenced to be publicly hanged.^[8]

Bruskina was paraded through the streets, but she walked calmly to her death. When she was placed on the stool, she turned her back to the crowd. This angered the executioners as they wanted her to stand with her face to the crowd. They tried to force her to turn around, but they were unsuccessful.

They kicked the stool away from her. Bruskina’s body hung for three days before the Germans allowed the town to bury her.

2 Truus Oversteegen

Truus Oversteegen’s entire family disagreed with Nazi ideology, so they helped Jewish people and political refugees illegally cross the border between Germany and the Netherlands. Sixteen-year-old Truus (pictured above, right) was eager to do more. When a member of the Dutch resistance asked her to join, she jumped at the chance. Oversteegen started with simple missions—distributing illegal newspapers, handing out leaflets, and procuring aid for refugees.

But Oversteegen soon took on more serious jobs. She entered concentration camps, provided false papers, and extracted Jewish children. Oversteegen and her fellow resistance members then found hiding places for the children.^[9]

Oversteegen was asked to join the armed resistance, and she accepted. She was given military training and taught how to shoot. Her first job was to flirt with German soldiers and lead them into the woods. There, they would be shot by fellow resistance members. Soon Oversteegen was shooting soldiers and blowing up bridges.

Her actions angered the Germans, who offered 50,000 guilders (more than $150,000 today) for her capture. She was never caught.

1 Adolfo Kaminsky

Adolfo Kaminsky dropped out of school at 13 to help support his family. He worked for a clothes dyer—similar to a modern-day dry cleaner. Kaminsky spent hours learning how to remove stains from fabric, and he developed a love of chemistry. He started to read chemistry books and perform experiments at home. He also spent weekends working for a chemist at a dairy.

The Nazis invaded his country when he was 16. Kaminsky and his family narrowly avoided a stay at a concentration camp. They had to go underground to survive.

Kaminsky’s father sent him to pick up false papers from a Jewish resistance group. When Kaminsky arrived, he was told that the group was struggling to remove a blue dye from the documents. He told them to use lactic acid, a trick he had learned at the dairy. It worked, and Kaminsky was asked to join the resistance.

By his 19th birthday, Kaminsky had saved the lives of thousands of people by making false documents: ID cards that did not say Jew, foreign passports, and train tickets.^[10] He never took a cent for his work. He just wanted to help disadvantaged people. Kaminsky continued his work after World War II by supplying fake documents to needy people all over the world.