Olivia Hallisey

Many guidance counselors will tell you that junior year is the most important in high school, when it comes to getting into the college of your choice. And while for most of us that means loading up on some APs, trying to land a leadership position in the extracurricular activity of our choice, and doing some extra community service, for Olivia Hallisey that was the bare minimum. As a junior at her Connecticut high school, Olivia, 17, won the 2015 Google Science Fair for inventing a new way to test for the Ebola virus. Last fall, when the swiftly spreading disease dominated the news cycle, Olivia saw a need for effective and widespread testing. “If you’re able to diagnose someone before they show symptoms, and isolate them, then they’re not contagious. That’s the best way to limit the spread,” she says. The problem with existing tests was that they were expensive to produce, not portable, and required electricity. On top of that, they all depended on being kept at a certain temperature — something hard to guarantee in countries where national health infrastructure isn’t well established.

Luckily, that’s where Olivia put her mind to work. Her winning design is portable, inexpensive (about $5 to produce in bulk compared to $1,000), temperature independent (meaning it doesn’t require constant refrigeration), and visual. She likes to say it’s "sort of like a pregnancy test for Ebola," which is easier for people to read. And even though Ebola isn't on the tip of everyone's tongue anymore, Olivia's invention can be applied further than the disease it was originally intended for. Her diagnostic could also be used for Zika, Lyme disease, and even slightly less scary (but no less affecting) illnesses like Celiac's — which Olivia herself has.

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