Siyaa Poddar
At age 16, Siyaa R. Poddar won a $75,000 Regeneron Young Scientist Award at Regeneron ISEF 2025 for RADAR, a low-cost color-changing detector for toxic silica and uranium dust from abandoned mines — Society for Science (2025).
What they built
Siyaa designed RADAR (Real-time Assessment of Deteriorative Airborne Risks), a novel low-cost colorimetric device that detects toxic silica and uranium dust released by abandoned mines in the US Southwest. The device uses metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) embedded with chemicals that change color upon contact with uranium or silica, giving communities and health workers an affordable, easy-to-use tool for real-time air quality monitoring. Rates of Sjögren's syndrome and other autoimmune diseases are disproportionately high on Indigenous reservations near these mines, and RADAR directly addresses this under-resourced public health crisis.
View ProjectThe F18 Thesis
Verified track record
- Regeneron Young Scientist Award ($75,000) at ISEF 2025 (Society for Science); YouTube feature by Society for Science (May 2025); Chandler News profile (Jun 2025); News for Kids (Jun 2025); TEDxGatewayYouth 2025 speaker (Sep 2025); ISEF project page: [PictureURL Finder] Checked high-priority Society for Science page; no direct portrait image URL accessible from extracted content. A Society for Science media kit appears to host photos behind a Box link (not a direct public image URL). PictureURL left as [no verified image found]. (source)