9th grade
Florida Virtual School (FLVS Flex) · honors track
Six classes finished with perfect grades, six more in progress — all honors except for French. I switched to FLVS so I could go faster and build the rest of my schedule around neuroscience.
About me
Why neuroscience.
I couldn’t help wondering not just what happens, but why the body and mind bother. Why does a neuron fire at all? Why does a brain, damaged and disoriented, sometimes find its way back?
Honors Chemistry gave me a molecular language: electrons shifting, bonds breaking, energy moving through a system looking for equilibrium. Honors Biology showed me that living systems are built from that same restlessness. Honors Physics gave me the forces underneath both. Every class kept pointing me back to the same place. The brain.
Last summer the question stopped being abstract. At Stanford’s CNI-X I worked on A.R.A.I.A., an app for people with aphasia — the condition where a stroke takes away your ability to speak or understand language, but your mind is still all there. You’re still in there. The words are gone. We built the therapy around Melodic Intonation Therapy: singing the words you can no longer say, because the right side of the brain often still has the music.
What I keep coming back to is this: the brain’s failing and its coming back are the same plasticity, just running in different directions. I want to study both.
Projects
What I’ve been working on.
Featured project
A.R.A.I.A. — an AI app for aphasia
An app for people who’ve had a stroke and can’t find their words anymore — but who are still completely there. We built the therapy around singing: when language won’t come, the music sometimes still does. Two weeks at Stanford CNI-X 2025, a six-person team, my capstone.
Open the project →NeuroCalm
A headband I’m designing to read brainwaves and give a calming nudge before sensory overload tips into crisis.
NeuroSense
My YouTube channel. I take real neuroscience research and turn it into videos for four different age groups. Nothing made up.
Stanford Neuroscience Forum 2026
I went to Stanford Medicine’s high-school neuroscience forum this year. Keynote on brain-computer interfaces, a session on digital biomarkers, and student research. Write-up here.
Independent reading
The books and papers I’m reading on my own. Some I’m working through, some I keep going back to.
Neurodivergent brains
Why brains differ — the science, what it actually feels like, and groups doing real work for the community.
Teen wellbeing
Numbers on teen mental health, simple things that help, and who to call if you need someone right now.
Education at a glance
School, plus what I do beyond it.
HarvardX MicroBachelors® in Neuroscience
MCB80 series · Prof. David Cox, Harvard
A university-level course on the brain that I worked through alongside high school. It starts with how a single neuron uses electricity to fire, and ends with how whole networks build perception and memory.
Clinical Neuroscience Immersion Experience
Stanford Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences · only rising freshman in the cohort
Two weeks at Stanford, working with med-school faculty on clinical neuroscience, neuropsychiatry, research methods, and design thinking. We presented our capstone (A.R.A.I.A.) to the faculty, staff, and our families at the end.
Pearson VUE certifications
HTML & CSS · Python · Device Configuration & Management
Real-world credentials I picked up while doing schoolwork. They’re what let me actually build the prototypes for projects like A.R.A.I.A. and NeuroCalm instead of just sketching them.
Get in touch.
I’m always glad to hear from researchers, teachers, students, or anyone working on neuroscience or assistive tech. If something on this site interests you, please write.
oztekinperi@icloud.com