For people with serious food allergies, a meal can come with an invisible risk. A 14-year-old Texas school student has taken that everyday problem and turned it into a science project: a small device designed to “smell” traces of common allergens before someone takes a bite.
Samvith Mahadevan, 14, from Austin, Texas, developed the device after dealing with food allergies himself. His invention, called The Allergent, combines a chemical sensor with machine learning to identify possible allergens in food. His work earned him the $10,000 Lemelson Foundation Award for Invention at the 2024 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge.
