A 15-year-old's fan-and-filter gadget for catching germs from the air just won America's top middle-school science prize

Bailey Quinn Frank, 15, from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has won the $25,000 top prize at the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge, the leading US middle-school science competition, run by Society for Science. Her winning project is disarmingly simple: a low-cost sampler that uses a small fan and filter paper to collect environmental DNA — the traces that bacteria leave floating in the air — so places can watch for possible health threats without expensive laboratory equipment. She hopes it will help rural communities, where keeping an eye on disease is hardest. Bailey was picked from 30 finalists drawn from nearly 2,000 applicants across 47 states and five territories; together the finalists received more than $100,000, and each finalist's school receives a $1,000 grant to support science teaching. The competition reaches 60,000 students a year.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation