Millie Pradawong Using AI and CRISPR to Rethink Biofuel
Most teenagers spend their free time scrolling through social media, playing video games or hanging out with friends. Here is a 14-year-old who is creating history with science and technology. Yes, you read it right. Meet Millie Pradawong, who spends her time thinking about algae, gene editing and machine learning. And the most interesting thing is that it does not stop there. She has gone a step ahead and built a computational tool that combines CRISPR and machine learning to explore microalgae. She was exploring whether they can produce more oil for biofuel without sacrificing their growth.
All this started with one simple question: how to increase oil production without slowing the growth of the algae themselves. Yes, that simple stubborn problem sparked the curiosity of this 14-year-old from Fairfax, Virginia.
She answered it with the computational tool called MACRO (Machine Learning-Augmented CRISPR Reprogramming Optimisation). The project uses machine learning to predict how genetic changes can alter microalgae metabolism. The aim was to find gene editing strategies that can increase biofuel production while keeping growth and efficiency in balance.
This one idea was placed among the 10 finalists in the 2026 3M Young Scientist Challenge. Millie did not claim that she has created a new super-producing algae strain.
This computational approach will propose which genetic changes might be worth investigating. But we still don’t know whether this will work in the real lab or not. This shows us where the real future of biology is heading.
Microalgae have always been attracting the attention of the scientific community whenever it’s about a source of renewable fuel. These organisms can grow faster under the right conditions and produce lipids, including oils that can be used as feedstocks for biofuels. They also use carbon dioxide during photosynthesis.
Theoretically, this combination makes them look like the best alternative to conventional fossil fuels. But researchers have found that it’s an expensive process. Based on the organism and the conditions, the efforts to increase the oil content can interfere with the growth or biomass production. This will lead to messy calculations. For example, an alga that produces plenty of oil but grows poorly may not be particularly useful for large-scale fuel production. This got Millie Pradawong’s attention.
As she explains in her project presentation, she was initially drawn to microalgae. It was due to their ability to grow quickly, absorb carbon dioxide and produce oils. The more she learned, the less straightforward the idea of algae biofuel seemed. She wanted to work on the part that was harder. She wanted to know how to get more oil without asking the organism to give up its growth.
That’s when CRISPR came into the picture.
CRISPR-based gene editing has given researchers a way to make targeted changes to DNA. In biological research, that opens the door to investigating what happens when particular genes are altered. But there can be a lot of possibilities.
A researcher trying to improve a metabolic process may have numerous genes, pathways and combinations of changes to consider. Testing everything experimentally would take considerable time and resources. Millie’s approach is to use machine learning before that stage.
MACRO is designed to predict how potential gene edits could redirect the way microalgae use their resources. The computer model can then be used to identify changes that appear more promising for the particular goal of improving biofuel production while preserving growth.
That does not replace the wet lab work. This is a new way of computational thinking that is increasing in biotech research. Machine learning is being used across biology to identify patterns in large datasets and make predictions that can subsequently be tested experimentally. Millie takes that idea and applies it to a very specific problem.
For her, the 3M competition was not a starting point. She entered the competition because she wanted to take an idea that had been sitting in her head and turn it into something more serious.
She also added that CRISPR is her favourite invention of the past 100 years because it changed what scientists could do with DNA. But she is equally interested in the story behind the technology.
In July, 3M and Discovery Education named Millie Pradawong one of the 10 finalists in the 2026 3M Young Scientist Challenge. She attends Thoreau Middle School in Fairfax County, Virginia. The 10 finalists, aged 11 to 14, were selected after presenting their ideas through short entry videos.
The finalists are spending the summer working with 3M scientist mentors before meeting for the final competition on October 12 and 13 at the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. The winner will receive $25,000 and the title of America’s Top Young Scientist.
For Millie, the competition is only a part of her story. Her interests are beyond biofuel. She has said that she hopes to become a physician scientist one day, combining work with patients and scientific research. You may find her future goal disconnected from the algae project. That may not be the case.
What she is pursuing now is essentially the same kind of question that drives research in medicine and biotechnology: there is a biological problem, the obvious solution has limitations, and the interesting work begins when someone asks whether there is another way around it.
For now, MACRO remains a computational proposal rather than a finished biofuel technology. The next question is whether the genetic predictions it makes can stand up to real-world biological testing.
That part will require experiments, data and probably a few surprises along the way. Millie Pradawong seems comfortable with that uncertainty. After all, the reason she became interested in the project was not that the answer was already known. It was because the problem wasn’t solved yet.
