Muslim Indian American Teen Wins University Hackathon

by Aysha Qamar

Muslim Indian American teenager and high school senior Mahum Siddiqi won the inaugural “Digital Transformation Hackathon” at Cornell University as the only non-graduate competitor.

The 17-year-old and her team designed a device that uses neurological activity to detect the actual pain level of a patient during a diagnosis.

“It’s incredibly upsetting and problematic how hypothetical the concept of pain diagnostics is. Doctors have no way of knowing how little or how much pain someone is truly experiencing when they go in to be diagnosed,” Siddiqi said in a statement on Friday.

After winning first prize, Siddiqi and her team will now be working with companies like Microsoft to produce a prototype of their pain-detecting device, the statement added.

“We need to design a system where patients are looked at as a whole, and doctors are able to know for sure, using our device/pure science, how much pain a patient is experiencing instead of just their personal description/perception of their own pain,” Siddiqi said.