Look Around! Problem-Solving 101

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Young Scientist Blog! My name is Shripriya Kalbhavi, and I am one of the top ten finalists from San Jose, California. It’s already been so exciting to learn from my mentor and come up with new innovations, but so far, I have come to realize that one of the tricky aspects of scientific research and development is coming up with a problem that needs a solution, which is what I will be talking about in my second blog post. 

The world is a wonderful place, which I realize every single day. However, despite the fact that the planet that we live on becomes more advanced and beneficial everyday, there are still some problems that many people have to deal with. As someone who is eager to help solve problems, I just found the list growing longer and longer. What could I solve? What was I most interested in?

Through reading the news and many books, I recognized many problems, including seed fraud in the farming industry, genetic diseases, and mental health struggles, but I realized that some of the biggest problems that stood out to me were long-term medication administration, cancer, and heart disease. These are problems that have affected the lives of people in my life, so I wanted to tackle these with solutions that would be feasible for me to accomplish during my summer mentorship. 

In the end, though there were many ideas and solutions that I wanted to go forward with, I decided on pursuing a solution to medication administration for people who needed an extended solution to it. For instance, I wanted to invent something that could help people who require long-term injections, such as kids with diabetes, by making their insulin therapy more convenient or something that could also benefit those who cannot take medications on their own, such as dementia or Alzheimer's patients. In addition, I also wanted to take in consideration the pain and fear aspect of it. 

Many people fear needles, especially children, who find them to be painful, but there is no real solution to this other than telling patients to face their fears. I was also afraid of needles for a very long time, and the thought of people suffering from their fears or pain being dismissed because they were “irrational” didn’t sit quite right for me. So, I came up with the EasyBZ microneedle patch, which actively delivers medication to patients painlessly and can deliver doses over a long period of time. Microneedles reduce the pain factor, while the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, along with an oscillating hydrogel, helps manage doses and actively deliver medication. 

Trying to come up with solutions to problems made me reflect on 3M scientists and their work as well. Just like I was, I think that 3M scientists are motivated to solve problems by the things that happen around them and in their lives. Current events and the needs that people have in their personal lives as well as industries are what I think inspire 3M scientists to solve problems. I feel that many of them might even have their own “Scientist Notebook” too!

I’m already learning a lot about myself in this scientific journey, and I hope you enjoy learning about me too! That is it for this time, so see you soon, right back here at the Young Scientist Blog. This is Shripriya, signing off. Have a great rest of your day!