Erin Smith

Founder of FacePrint and STEMinists

Erin Smith is a student at Shawnee Mission West High School. She is developing algorithms that diagnose Parkinson's disease and discovering facial biomarkers for other neurological diseases.

Smith is the founder of FacePrint, a novel, telemedicine diagnostic tool for Parkinson’s disease. The tool uses early stage Parkinson’s disease facial biomarkers she discovered and quantified.

As part of this research, Smith taught myself to code and quickly fell in love with the art form it enabled. As a result, she founded KC STEMinists, an organization that teaches Kansas City area middle and high school girls how to code — with an emphasis on entrepreneurship and creating sustainable community solutions.

This summer, Smith will attend the Research Summer Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT.