He also co-founded Project LIFE, a student-led initiative that has grown to over 20 chapters in eight states, with a mission to improve education and access to the bone marrow registry. Outside the lab, Jin captains his varsity swim team and co-presidents his DECA chapter.
A 16-year-old senior at William A. His work earned him the 2026 Davidson Fellowship and a $50,000 scholarship, according to the Davidson Institute website. Most teenagers go to a pathology office for a blood test. For Austin Jin, it was the launch pad to address one of medicine’s oldest and most enduring problems: diagnosing tuberculosis. Shine Great Neck South High School in Great Neck, NY, developed M-CATCH, a diagnostic platform based on CRISPR that can detect tuberculosis from blood and identify drug-resistant strains. Scroll down to read about his journey. This test is not intended to determine whether tuberculosis exists. It can also look for genetic alterations that make the bacteria resistant to certain drugs and that level of detection can come down to a single change in DNA. Jin engineered CRISPR guide RNAs that can distinguish between these tiny genetic differences and combined them with a microfluidics chip that allows multiple reactions to occur at the same time.
Research to broader impact
He also co-founded Project LIFE, a student-led initiative that has grown to over 20 chapters in eight states, with a mission to improve education and access to the bone marrow registry. Outside the lab, Jin captains his varsity swim team and co-presidents his DECA chapter.