Teen helps public research causes that are important to them

At four years old, Saaim Khan was diagnosed with moderate sensorineural hearing loss.

Sensorineural hearing loss is permanent and caused by damage to the inner ear or the nerve from the ear to the brain.

Khan and his family never knew what happened to cause his hearing loss. Which is why now, as a senior at Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School in Bloomfield Hills, it’s important to him to research hearing loss and gene expression in diseases.

“It took lots of searching and over 650 emails to local professors before I finally landed a research position. That’s when I realized, for the vast majority of students and the general public, getting involved with research on the causes they care about is very challenging,” said Khan.

In June 2019, Khan decided to launch his first free online course called Conducting Introductory Computational Biology Research on the online learning platform Udemy. The purpose of this course was to provide an avenue for the public to identify markers for just about any genetic disease. Khan said, since then, nearly 3,000 people from 114 countries with a wide variety of backgrounds have enrolled in this course.

This summer, Khan launched his second free Udemy course – Structural Biology 101: A Beginner’s Guide. In this course, students are able to delve into more advanced research geared towards drug identification for a wide range of diseases. In the past five months, more than 750 students have enrolled from 89 different countries.

Khan has also partnered with the local nonprofit Key2Finesse to bring research guidance to about 25 middle and high school students from Troy and Novi.

“Through a series of lectures, tutoring sessions and workshops, I’ve had the incredible opportunity to help local students solidify their project ideas, reach out to professors, and learn key bioinformatics skills,” he said.

“When I sought out research opportunities, it was a long and challenging process. Through these courses, I hope to minimize the barriers that students and the general public face when it comes to getting involved with research on the causes they care about.”