TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year Heman Bekele’s Invention Could Treat Skin Cancer

Source: Courtesy / Time

TIME and TIME for Kids revealed the 2024 Kid of the Year, recognizing one exceptional young person and five honorees, who are all giving hope for the future. Meet 15 year old scientist Heman Bekele who’s changing the future of medicine with his innovative discovery and invention. Read more inside.

The Fairfax, Virginia teenager made history as TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year. Heman is being recognized for developing an affordable compound-based bar of soap that could in the future be a new and more accessible way to deliver medication to treat skin cancers, including melanoma.

“I’m really passionate about skin-cancer research,” Bekele tells TIME in the cover story. “Whether it’s my own research or what’s happening in the field. It’s absolutely incredible to think that one day my bar of soap will be able to make a direct impact on somebody else’s life. That’s the reason I started this all in the first place.”

For some reason, this reminds us of Taj Mowry’s character Willie Donovan’s invention in Disney’s Seventeen Again. The difference is that Willie was working with defying the laws of time and Heman has unlocked something that could alter the way doctors treat skin cancers.

Hemen has been experimenting at home since he was four years old. He told TIME that he would whip of the most dangerous of what he referred to as “potions” when he was just 7 years old. He would mix up whatever he could get his hands on with household items like dish soap, laundry detergent and other common household chemicals.

“I would hide them under my bed and see what would happen if I left them overnight,” Bekele shared of his early childhood experiments. “There was a lot of mixing together completely at random.”

Bekele was the chosen recipient for this year’s Kid of the Year, and he is joined by five other honorees, including inventor Shanya Gill (13, San Jose, CA), advocate Madhvi Chittoor (12, Arvada, CO), advocate Jordan Sucato (15, Phoenix, AZ), actor Keivonn Woodard (11, Bowie, MD), and entrepreneur Dom Pecora (15, Malvern, PA).

Be sure to check out Heman’s full cover story and watch his interview here.

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