Your Stories: Conquering Cancer

With a rare exception here and there, most scientists will at least complete a college-level science class before making their first cancer research breakthrough. Heman Bekele, on the other hand, is just wrapping up his sophomore year of high school.  By the time he was named Time Magazine’s Kid of the Year in 2024, Heman was already generating buzz in the scientific community. The year before, he’d won the grand prize in the 2023 3M Young Scientist’s Challenge, in which kids compete to think of the most unique solutions to common problems.   His entry? A soap that could potentially be used to treat skin cancer, inspired by his early childhood years in Ethiopia.    “One of the things that really stood out to me was that a lot of people worked really long hours outside in the sun,” says Heman, who first began developing the idea when he was around 11 years old. Over time, he learned more about skin cancer, its prevalence in low- and middle-income countries, and the lack of awareness and treatments for