Kavin Ramadoss
Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes 2025 Runner-Up for building AutoFilter, a low-cost ML + molecular-docking framework that screened 2.4M compounds to identify new malaria inhibitors — Barron Prize 2025 runners-up profile.
What they built
Created AutoFilter, a novel low-cost biocomputational framework that integrates machine learning and molecular docking to rapidly identify new drug candidates against malaria — a disease causing ~249 million cases annually that is increasingly resistant to all four major existing treatments. Teaching himself advanced biochemistry and coding custom Python scripts, Kavin screened the ChEMBL database of 2.4 million bioactive molecules to identify five promising compounds targeting a key Plasmodium falciparum enzyme. He then experimentally validated one compound, finding it inhibits malaria by over 50%. His work was published as a peer-reviewed preprint on engrxiv and recognized as a 2025 Gloria Barron Prize runner-up, reflecting both its scientific rigor and real-world potential to reduce global malaria mortality.
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