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“It seems to be very promising,” he said.

There are several OHRI labs working on cancer-killing viruses already, and Aditya fit right in, said Crawley.

She worked with one high school student several years ago and it went well. Since then she hadn’t met a student at that level who impressed her until Aditya called.

“I met with him and I was blown away with his ideas,” she said.

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“Immunology is not an easy subject… But he handles the complex and understands it at the higher level, the big picture, but also the minutiae of detail that’s required at the cellular level. And he’s able to connect different disciplines together.”

“A lot of this is based on research that I’ve done outside school,” Aditya said. “Just reading the journals and collaborating with scientists was something I developed an interest for in my spare time.”

“I had these ideas, and to test them out I knew I would need a mentor and knew I would definitely need help. I emailed pretty much as many professors as I could find.”

At the Crawley lab they had to start him with a lot of basics: How to use reagents (chemicals that make a reaction happen), how to use pipettes (small tubes for handling liquids).

He threw himself into the work, putting in three to six hours after school several times a week. Crawley, awed by his dedication, wonders how he found the time.

Two years later, “they’re still supervising me and still helping me out a lot, but they’re definitely giving me a bit more independence and (showing) more confidence that I won’t blow up the lab,” he said.