15-year-old Scientist Heman Bekele, creator of a skin cancer-treating soap, named TIME’s 2024 ‘Kid of the Year’

Heman Bekele, a 15-year-old from Fairfax County, Virginia, has been honored as TIME’s Kid of the Year for 2024. This prestigious recognition highlights his remarkable achievement: inventing a soap that could potentially treat and prevent various forms of skin cancer.

TIME magazine featured Heman Bekele as a “15-year-old scientist who could change how we treat skin cancer.”

Originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Heman moved to the United States with his family when he was 4. His early memories of workers laboring under the intense sun motivated him to find a way to protect people from skin damage.

Through his research, he discovered imiquimod, a drug that combats skin cancer, and imagined incorporating it into an affordable and widely accessible soap. His groundbreaking idea, which involves using lipid-based nanoparticles to deliver the drug via soap, captured the attention of the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, earning him a US$25,000 award in 2023 as America’s top young scientist.

Heman is now working with Vito Rebecca, a molecular biologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, to further develop his skin-cancer-fighting soap. This collaboration provides Heman with the opportunity to conduct research in a professional laboratory, where he is currently testing his invention’s effectiveness using experiments with mice.