This teen invented a lifesaving vehicle.

• Author: Ross, Brooke
• Position: SCIENCE - Anurudh Ganesan

More than a million children worldwide die every year from preventable diseases. One teen's invention could change that.

Every year, 1.5 million kids around the world die as a result of vaccine-preventable diseases. This is mainly because transporting and storing medicines can be a huge challenge in some countries. Anurudh Ganesan, 17, knows this firsthand. When he was a baby in India, his grandparents carried him across 10 miles of rough terrain to a health clinic in a remote village so he could receive a polio vaccine. But by the time the family arrived at the clinic, it was too late.

"When we got there, all the vaccines were useless because of high temperatures and lack of refrigeration," says Anurudh, who immigrated to the U.S. as a child and is now a senior at Clarksburg High School in Maryland.

Vaccines, he later learned, must be kept at a specific temperature--between 35 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit--to remain effective. If the medicine gets too warm or too cold, it spoils and won't work. But refrigerating vaccines requires electricity or ice, resources that many developing countries lack. In fact, an estimated 1.2 billion people in the world don't have access to reliable electricity, according to the United Nations Foundation.

Although Anurudh eventually received the vaccine he needed, his experience as a baby--and the sad reality that so many other children aren't as lucky--prompted him to take action. He invented Vaxxwagon, a portable vaccine-carrying device that generates its own power. Vaxxwagon is designed to keep lifesaving medicines at the proper temperature as they're delivered in remote areas around the world.

Takinq Apart the Refrigerator

Anurudh first got his idea for Vaxxwagon in 2014. He read several textbooks to learn everything he could about refrigeration and vaccines. After completing his research, he began formulating his ideas on paper.

The biggest challenge was figuring out how to keep something refrigerated without electricity. Anurudh took a refrigerator apart to reverse engineer the process of refrigeration.

Through this effort, he figured out a way to use wheels to power a refrigeration system for about eight hours without using electricity or ice. The design would allow the entire rechargeable cooling system to be pulled by a bicycle, a car, or an animal to areas in need of vaccines (see "How Vaxxwagon Works," right).

Eventually, Anurudh took his design to professors at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland for...