Courtesy of Lisa Fryklund/Society for Science (Shanya Gill); Courtesy of Dean Lomax (Ruby Reynolds); © David MacDonald/Team BlueScuti (Willis Gibson); Shutterstock.com (all other images)

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Making Their Mark

What do a fossil hunter, an inventor, and a gamer have in common? They have all shown that you can do just about anything if you put your mind to it. Here’s a look at how these three kids have made their mark on the world.

January 6, 2025
By Alicia Green, Jasmine Ting, and Rebecca Zissou

The Inventor: Shanya Gill

Courtesy of Lisa Fryklund/Society for Science

Shanya Gill hopes to make Early Fire Alert available to the public soon.

Age: 13 

Hometown: San Jose, California 

When a restaurant in her neighborhood burned down in July 2022, Shanya Gill got to thinking. Smoke detectors alert people to fires that have already started. But what if there were a device that could prevent fires from starting in the first place? 

Shanya spent the next year designing one. Her device, called Early Fire Alert, has a tiny computer and thermal camera. It can identify a heat source, like a burner on a stove or a lit candle. If the heat source is left unattended for 10 minutes or longer, the device sends a text message alert.

In November 2023, Shanya’s invention won the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge. She beat out nearly 2,000 other middle schoolers to take home a $25,000 prize.

Shanya plans to continue to test Early Fire Alert and to raise money to further develop the technology. She encourages other kids to bring their ideas to life.

“Kids should keep their eyes open to notice problems,” Shanya says. “And they should believe they can solve them.”

The Fossil Hunter: Ruby Reynolds

Courtesy of Dean Lomax

This illustration shows what an ichthyosaur may have looked like.

Age: 15 

Hometown: Braunton, England

In May 2020, Ruby Reynolds and her dad went to a beach near their home to hunt for fossils. They spotted a 4-inch-long piece of hardened bone. Then another fossil caught 11-year-old Ruby’s eye—it was twice as long. 

They had found the preserved remains of a jawbone of an ichthyosaur (IK-thee-uh-sor). This prehistoric reptile ruled the seas during the time of the dinosaurs.

Ruby and her dad later returned to the beach with a paleontologist and another fossil expert. They found even more pieces of jawbone. Paleontologists determined that the fossils were from a type of ichthyosaur no one had known about before. It lived about 202 million years ago and was more than 80 feet long. It’s the largest ocean reptile ever found!

Today the fossils are on display at a museum in England. Ruby hopes to inspire other kids to be explorers.

“You never know where a discovery may take you,” she told The New York Times. 

The Gamer: Willis Gibson

© David MacDonald/Team BlueScuti (Gibson)

Age: 14 

Hometown: Stillwater, Oklahoma

The blocks on Willis Gibson’s screen were falling faster and faster. He tapped the buttons on his Nintendo controller as quickly as he could. Suddenly, the screen froze. That might sound like bad news, but Willis got so excited that he was speechless. He had just become the first person to beat the video game Tetris. 

In Tetris, players stack falling shapes made from blocks to form rows that get cleared from the screen. At higher levels, the blocks fall so fast that it’s difficult to keep up. If the stack reaches the top of the screen, it’s game over. 

On December 21, 2023, Willis accomplished what gamers had been trying to do for nearly 40 years. At level 157, he reached the kill screen. That’s the point where the game crashes because it can’t compute a player’s score fast enough. Reaching the kill screen is considered beating the game. For Willis, years of practice had paid off.

“Normally I can’t sit still for more than 10 minutes,” he says. “But when I’m playing Tetris, it’s the one thing I can really focus on.”

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