Indian American student is CEO of Mosquitoes Be Gone.
AB Wire
An Indian American student at Stony Brook University, in New York, Ruchi Shah, of Ronkonkoma, NY, has been named by Glamour magazine in its ‘Top 10 College Women of the Year’. Shah, and the 9 other students selected were chosen for their leadership qualities and humanitarian work. Each of them will get $20,000 in prize money.
Shah, a biology major, is CEO of Mosquitoes Be Gone, an all-natural mosquito repellent to combat disease in third world countries; she has also been recognized by the American Association for Cancer Research for her research on improving cervical cancer diagnoses.
This is how Glamour quoted Shah as saying about how she started her venture to quell the threat of mosquitoes, which spreads malaria among other diseases:
“When I was 15, I went to India to visit my uncle. He was suffering from dengue fever, a disease that is transmitted by mosquitoes. Yet right outside the clinic, people were getting dozens of mosquito bites! So I decided to develop my own bug repellent. Back home I collected sweat samples from athletes at school (that wasn’t awkward at all) and, in a test chamber I built in our garage with supplies from Home Depot, studied exactly what most attracted the bugs. Then I set out to create a bug spray to neutralize those compounds. Hundreds of failed recipes—and bites—later, I found the winner. Mosquitoes Be Gone is the first repellent to neutralize nitrogen-based compounds in sweat. And it’s all-natural. I’m finalizing safety testing and bottle design, and it should be on shelves within a year. I’m proof anyone can ‘do science’; it’s OK to be a little nerdy and pursue your passion.”
Shah has also been in the past recognized by the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair and her venture has been noted by Forbes magazine.