Character & Charisma #5

I was sitting in the kitchen with my mom and sister, eating the usual breakfast of Cinnamon Toast Crunch with milk. My eyes locked onto my phone, while scrolling on Instagram. My mom was at the stove cooking eggs, and my sister was on her phone. Suddenly she blanked out for a second and almost fell out of her chair. The sudden jerking motion drew my eyes away from the screen. My mom was shocked and sprinted over to her to ask what happened. My sister didn’t realize anything had happened to her. At first we didn’t really think anything of it until it happened again.

My mom was worried about what was happening to my sister, since she also experienced similar symptoms in her childhood but was never officially diagnosed. My sister was taken to a doctor, who ran many EEG and MRI scans to confirm what was really happening. She hated all of these tests, especially the MRI machine, since she was essentially stuck in a metal tube for hours while loud sounds played around her. She was diagnosed with absence seizures, which is different from the Grand Mal seizures that people typically associate with Epilepsy. After the diagnosis, she had to take medication to control her symptoms and also had many parts of her life restricted. She could no longer go under the water when swimming, had to sleep early, had to eat less sugar, and was not allowed to be home alone. She was 13 years old having to relive being a kid again.

 Since she was almost at the age to get her learners permit, she was excited to start drivers ed. However, we found that since she has Epilepsy, if she were to have had a seizure she would not be allowed to drive for 6 months. Even more worrying is the possibility that she could have a seizure while driving, endangering herself and others around her. She felt helpless, and I did too as her brother. I was looking forward to her driving me places, but now the possibility that I might have to be her chauffeur for the rest of my life was a lot more plausible than I would have liked it to have been. I needed to do something about it, mainly for her sake, but also slightly selfishly for my own. All jokes aside, this was a huge issue – one that there most certainly had to be a solution for. I realized there are many people and families out there that must be going through the same thing. I needed to take action for my sister and so many others in the same position. 

The solution that I came up with was a seizure detecting device that could connect to a car. By using this device to constantly monitor EEG signals, it could use an AI model to predict if a seizure were to occur. If a seizure is predicted to happen, then a warning could be sent to the driver, or the car could automatically pull over if it has self-driving capabilities. This solution would be a grand task to implement, but could be a feasible fix if a company such as Tesla, or General Motors were to pursue it.

In order to prove that this could be a feasible idea to solve the problem of people with epilepsy not being able to drive, I had help from InspiritAI. I had done one project with them during the summer of my sophomore year on detecting skin cancer using AI, and I wanted to pursue another project that could use AI to detect a seizure. InspiritAI partnered me with a mentor, who was an MIT alumni. During our time together, we worked on creating an AI model that could detect a seizure. He helped me with all parts of creating an AI model, such as data preprocessing, evaluating the model, and writing a research paper. During the project, I searched the internet for professional articles that paired AI with seizure detection, but to my surprise there was not that many. There were many other roadblocks besides the surprising lack of research in this area, such as the lack of EEG data to train the AI models on. The greatest roadblock is being 17 and not having the resources to conduct research and implement this idea on a large scale. So, what does a 17 year old do? Write a proposal to someone that has these things.

Using what I learned from this project, I have been in the process of creating a research proposal to send to Tesla. Through this proposal I hope that Tesla will see the value of this idea, and hope that they will pursue research in this area to allow those with epilepsy to be able to drive freely. Down the line, this technology could be expanded to protect more drivers by detecting heart attacks, strokes, or any medical emergency. When I get to college, the next steps could be proposing this idea to my college, or using their labs to conduct my own research. 

Who would have ever thought that the mundane morning spent eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch would end up paving the way for my life’s mission?