GREENWICH–Here’s a happy follow up to a story FOX 61 reported last September: a local high school girl is being recognized for her talents.
Last year we reported that Olivia Hallisey, a junior at Greenwich High School, had won the global Google Science Fair for her “Ebola Assay Card,” which quickly detects the Ebola virus and does not need to be refrigerated, like most diagnostic tests.
“It’s basically a pregnancy test for Ebola,” Hallisey said at the time.
Now, she’s gotten even bigger accolades. Hallisey was one of just about 100 students from across the country invited to the White House Science Fair. Students came to showcase their innovations in a variety of STEM fields.
Hallisey said during an interview at the White House on Wednesday that her test improved on diagnostic tests that came before it by cutting down the cost from $1,000 to $5, the time for diagnosis from two hours to 30 minutes, and cutting away the need for refrigeration, making it accessible to anyone.
What’s most important about her research though is that the test is not only applicable to Ebola. She’s finding ways to use it to quickly and inexpensively diagnose Zika, which is quickly spreading across the world, as well as Lyme disease and other illnesses.
During that interview, Hallisey explained where she got the idea for her project:
I’m in a science research course at school, and everybody does an independent research project, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, so I started looking at the news–and that was last fall, when Ebola was huge–and what was so shocking to me was how quickly it was spreading, and how it just seemed to target an area and grow exponentially in that area. So I wanted to find ways to limit the spread, and the best way to do that is through diagnostic tools.
You can watch her full interview starting at 47:30, and it lasts about 2 minutes and 40 seconds.
And here’s more about how her test differs from others:
As she learned about the challenges of delivering medical care in remote areas, she recalled her science lesson about silk storage and its stabilizing properties, thinking that silk could allow Ebola antibodies to travel much longer without the need for refrigeration. Olivia created the Ebola Assay card—a temperature-independent, rapid, portable, and inexpensive diagnostic test for the detection of the Ebola virus.
