YRI Fellow Suriya Dev Saravanakumar, a 9th grader at Doha College in Qatar, has had his research paper accepted at IEEE EMBC 2026, the 48th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, held July 26 to 30, 2026 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, Canada.
EMBC is the annual international conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, which describes itself as the world's largest international society of biomedical engineers. The 2026 conference received submissions from over 80 countries, making this an extraordinary achievement for a high school freshman with no prior research experience.
The Research
Suriya's paper, "Calibration Reliability of Eye-Tracking-Based Alzheimer's Disease Models Under Signal Degradation" (Paper ID: 1706), presents a machine learning framework that analyzes eye-tracking patterns to distinguish Alzheimer's patients from healthy controls.
The research evaluates multiple ML models including Random Forest, XGBoost, a feed-forward neural network and ensemble methods, using ten-fold cross-validation to assess reliability. Key findings include:
- ROC-AUC of 0.75 for the best-performing model
- Horizontal eye-position measures identified as the strongest diagnostic indicators
- Each eye-tracking feature captures a different aspect of cognitive decline, providing complementary diagnostic signals
From Zero to IEEE EMBC
When Suriya joined the YRI Fellowship in September 2025, he had:
- Zero research experience
- No prior mentorship or science fair background
- A clear goal: using AI to detect Alzheimer's disease from eye movements
Within months, working with his YRI PhD mentor, he developed a complete computational framework, wrote a full research paper, and submitted it to one of the most competitive conferences in biomedical engineering. If you are starting at the same point, our guide to research programs for 9th graders covers where freshmen can begin, and how to publish in IEEE as a high school student walks through the conference route he took.
What's Next
With the EMBC 2026 acceptance behind him, Suriya is working toward his goal of competing at ISEF-level science fairs and eventually building a company based on his research.
His journey shows that age and experience are not barriers to serious research. The right mentorship and structured guidance can take a motivated student from zero to an international conference in under a year.
Interested in following a similar path? Apply to the YRI Fellowship and start your research journey.