Stephanie Wang

Author, innovator and scientist Stephanie Wang is an incoming freshman at Harvard University studying Molecular and Cellular Biology and Government. On top of her many academic awards, prizes and scholarships, Stephanie’s true passion lies in educational equality, public health, and medicine. Stephanie founded the non-profit Kid Teach Kid, an online platform that fosters youth learning through mentorship from high-achieving peers. Kid Teach Kid currently has over 1,400 students enrolled on its platform, and its initiatives include a four-week summer camp with more than 1,000 attendees, a 6-week math bootcamp with over 300 attendees, a national math contest, one of the first-ever middle school hackathons with over 200 participants, and a fundraiser that donated 600 surgical masks to a local hospital.

After witnessing the spread of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, Stephanie embarked on an ambitious journey by founding Project Unmasked, a national education campaign to promote public health literacy far and wide. Project Unmasked engages in curricular and legislative activism, including providing educational materials to teachers, hosting programs and courses for students, and working with lawmakers to reform the education statute to emphasize public health. Project Unmasked has worked with the Texas State Board of Education, Texas senators, congressional representatives, and CDC educators, and its curriculum is used by more than 4,000 students in several states. It has been recognized by Congress, national media, and on the Times Square Billboard in New York City, and has reached over 70,000 people.

Stephanie also wrote and published Epidemiology Unmasked, an introductory textbook covering topics in epidemiology and public health to spread public health literacy during COVID-19 pandemic. Used by over 3,000 students as an official textbook in schools internationally, it has been reviewed and endorsed by three professors and was featured by CBS KHOU, Houston Chronicle, LA Times, UNMGCY and the US Congress. Proceeds from sales were then used to buy more than 1,000 masks to donate to a local hospital serving under-insured patients.

Facing discrimination and stigma as a woman in STEM, Stephanie started the Houston inteGIRLS chapter, an organization dedicated to promoting female involvement in STEM. It hosted the first Houston inteGIRLS math tournament with over 100 girls, most of whom were competing for the first time.

As a research scholar at the Research Science Institute at Harvard Medical School, Stephanie has also made advances in researching potential Alzheimer's disease treatment, coordinating in vivo validation experiment at Harvard Medical School and presenting a paper at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Conference.

If Stephanie were to win the Global Student Prize, her priorities will be to increase the scope of advocacy work conducted by Project Unmasked; fund the validation study for her Alzheimer’s research; fund research projects in the most pressing diseases such as heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, and cancer; and donate a sizeable proportion to humanitarian efforts for Ukraine.