Student Strives to Outsmart Alzheimer’s Disease By June Scharf wathi Srinivasan, a Beachwood High School junior, hasn’t had a single minute to get her temporary driver’s license, and it’s an exceptionally long overdue task. She’s even been heavily bribed and coaxed by her eager parents. Instead, Swathi has been spending time in science labs and conducting research that supports solving the enigma that is Alzheimer’s disease. “Although we’re not close to finding a cure yet, that’s my goal, but it’s really far away,” Swathi says. But she also claims plenty of other draws on her time Like what? “Oh man, in school or outside of it?” she needs to know. The sum total includes being an internationally top-ranked classical Indian dancer (practicing 3-4 days per week, 2-3 hours per lesson), serving as one of four students on BHS’s acclaimed Academic Challenge team, reading a couple of books weekly outside of school assignments (she just finished A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood), being vice-president of her class and library club treasurer, blogging for BHS’s newspaper The Beachcomber, winning local and national science-fair competitions, and competing on the debate team and Science Olympiad. Oh, she also plays violin in the high school orchestra. The 16 year old, who has attended Beachwood schools since kindergarten, is the only child of Rekha Srinivasan, a Case Western Reserve University organic chemistry professor, and Ravi Srinivasan, an engineer and owner of a company that creates devices with biomedical and medical technology applications. Tamil is the Indian language spoken in their home. The genesis of her interest in Alzheimer’s can be traced to watching the popular medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy,” where a storyline had lead character Dr. Derek Shepherd researching the disease. She learned from the show that the disease is among the top 10 causes of death in the U.S. “I found this baffling, but I was fascinated by it, too,” she says. When she entered 9th grade, at age 14, it was time to take action on her quest to solve this medical mystery, so she contacted a research lab at CWRU. She was told, amid great skepticism, that she was too young to be involved there. “This made me grumpy, so I moved on.” S 8 Beachwood Buzz n April 2016