Tufts University freshman and Port Washington resident Harry Paul attended the fifth White House Science Fair on March 23, presented his work to President Obama and exhibited his project at the White House. Paul was one of eleven Society for Science & the Public science fair alumni who were invited to the event. He won a Best of Category award in Engineering: Material and Bioengineering and the Innovation Exploration Award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2014 for his project studying congenital scoliosis, a lateral curvature of the spinal column caused by utero segmentation failures. His research provides a novel implant for the treatment of congenital scoliosis that has the promise of lowering the number of risky revision procedures. Paul was also an Intel STS 2014 semifinalist.
When asked in a recent interview with his college newspaper, The Tufts Daily, if he had any advice for young engineers, Paul replied, “Anyone who is really passionate about something should have a chance to keep talking about and working on it. It doesn’t matter who you are to be interested in science, and if you are interested in it, you can go as far as you want. Don’t give up. I could have given up a trillion times. My device failed again and again and again. I could have just said, I failed, I didn’t win, and given up. You will keep having failures until you don’t fail, and then it’s amazing.”
