Heman Bekele

TIME's 2024 Kid of the Year

Winner of the 2023 3M Young Scientist Challenge

As a fifteen-year-old, Heman Bekele was named TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year for his groundbreaking skin cancer prevention and treatment work.

Born in Ethiopia, he immigrated to the US as a four-year-old with his family. Heman’s memories of people working under the glaring sun, plus the dramatic differences in skin cancer survival rates, were his driving forces. He developed a skin cancer-treating soap that encourages dendritic cells to boost their immune responses, thereby protecting the skin as an immunotherapeutic, a promising approach to early-stage cancer detection and treatment.

As a previous winner of the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, Heman is working with scientists to conduct clinical trials on mice and is on his way to securing a patent.