The 15-year-old who changed the way we diagnosed cancer is now a 16-year-old with a new mission.
Jack Andraka, who developed a better test for pancreatic cancer, wants to make knowledge a basic human right.
See also: Cancer, the Video Game: A Story of Hope
"Science shouldn't be a luxury, and knowledge shouldn't be a commodity," he said Monday at the 2013 Social Good Summit.
Andraka said that during his research on pancreatic cancer, he paid thousands of dollars — or rather, his parents did — to access scientific articles. At about $35 an article, in-depth learning can become expensive.
"We're living in a knowledge aristocracy. We have a knowledge elite," he said, explaining that less than 1% of the world controls scientific, academic research.
"If a 15-year-old who didn't even know what a pancreas was could find a new way to detect pancreatic cancer, then just imagine what we all can do," he said.
Andraka first became interested in science and research when he was 13 years old and a close family-friend passed from pancreatic cancer. Eager to make sense of the death, he took to the Internet for answers.
He Googled his way to a grim discovery: More than 85% of pancreatic cancers are diagnosed late, many when the survival rate is as low as 2%. That's largely due to the standard test, he said. The $800 test has a habit of misdiagnosing patients, and is backed by 60-year-old technology — science that's older than Andraka's dad.
He was so moved by the lackluster technology that he gave up his social life to spend countless hours conducting Internet research. After a summer in front of the computer, he discovered a new protein to detect the cancer.
The next step was making a a paper test strip to detect the protein. "Making a paper sensor for cancer is about as simple as making chocolate chip cookies ," he said.
But as he became more serious about his research he realized one thing: "I can't do cancer research on my kitchen counter top." So, he sent letters to 200 labs to help further his research in a more sterile, scientific environment. He received 199 nos.
"I learned that college professors aren't really as nice as their profile pictures make them look," Andraka said after receiving harsh critiques of his process.
But one lab at Johns Hopkins University finally said yes. Seven months of lab work later, he finally created one paper sensor — one that takes only five minutes to run and is 400 times more sensitive than the current pancreatic cancer test. Its total cost is only 3 cents.
Andraka hopes that the test can be expanded to detect other cancers and eventually other diseases, such as HIV and Malaria. He also hopes to take down the knowledge aristocracy.
"Imagine if we lived in a knowledge democracy," he said. "It should be a basic human right."

The Social Good Summit is where big ideas meet new media to create innovative solutions and is brought to you by Mashable, The 92nd Street Y, The United Nations Foundation, The United Nations Development Programme, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Ericsson. Held during U.N. Week, the Social Good Summit unites a dynamic community of global leaders to discuss a big idea: the power of innovative thinking and technology to solve our greatest challenges.
Date: Sept. 22 through Sept. 24 Time: 12 to 6 p.m. each day Location: 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave., New York, N.Y. Tickets are sold-out, but tune into the Livestream.
BONUS: 10 Empowering Apps for Social Good
Gone are the days of daring your friends without consequences. When you challenge your friends to Budge, the person who loses the challenge needs to donate an agreed upon amount to a charity of the winner's choosing.
Available on iOS.
Charity Miles lets you raise money for your favorite causes while walking, running or biking. The app's corporate sponsors donate 25 cents for each mile you walk or run, and 10 cents for each mile you bike.
Charity Miles is available for iOS and Android.
With every photo you share, Johnson & Johnson donates $1 to a cause of your choosing. The Donate a Photo app, available on iOS and Android, also lets you follow your friends' photos, so you can keep up with your social life.
Great for foodies, photographers and humanitarians, this iOS app adds a great cause to your foodstagrams. When you dine and snap a food shot at one of the participating restaurants -- which, for now, are only in New York -- a meal is donated to a non-profit feeding schoolchildren in South Africa.
In this free iOS game, you'll travel with Maya, an Indian girl, as she navigates the slums in search of clean water. The longer it takes her to find water, the more school she misses.
The game was created in partnership with charity: water, which lends in-game missions and video scenes to the app.
Did you know that with the money you save cooking three of your own meals, you could fund someone's HIV medicine for three months? Instead is an iOS app that shows you how much you can save with simple tweaks in your lifestyle. Once you make those cheaper decisions, Instead encourages you to donate to a non-profit out of your savings.
My Life as a Refugee is an app for iOS and Android created by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It lets anyone around the world experience life fleeing from conflict or persecution. Through beautiful illustrations, you'll read the stories of the app's many characters, who have been separated from their loved ones and have experienced hardships.
The Recyclebank app, available for iOS and Android, rewards you for recycling. The gamification of recycling awards points that you can redeem in stores and in the app.
Forget daily deal apps -- there are apps that give back while giving you a great deal. TangoTab, available for iOS and Android, donates meals to food banks every time a diner purchases one of its restaurant deals.
Eager for a new volunteer program? This iOS app brings the online volunteer network onto your smartphone. It has a sleek interface that will help you find great opportunities to give back near you.
VolunteerMatch lets you select which skill you're looking to use to volunteer, so you can lend your expert web design or managerial skills, for example.
Image: Flickr, XPRIZE Foundation