The teens love of science began back in fifth grade, when he became fascinated by the appearance of cells under a microscope. Stonewall’s love of the sciences grew to such extremes that one Christmas he was gifted four microscopes by his parents who are educators. It was during his freshman year at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences that Kevin Stonewall began focusing on the need for the eradication of colon cancer. He watched not only a dear friend’s uncle succumb to the disease but witnessed first hand how the illness negatively impacted his school mate, telling DNAInfo Chicago, “Cancer has taken over a whole bunch of lives, and I felt like I needed to step up and do something about it.”
Stonewall was a senior in high school when he jumped on the opportunity to do an internship at the university, which is the academic arm of the Rush Medical Center. He worked in the lab with a professor who taught immunology/microbiology and general surgery. Stonewall began to consume literature about how a chemotherapeutic agent could possibly destroy certain cancer cells while still promoting a healthy immune response.
Kevin, who is now a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, is still working on the vaccine that he prays will one day be tested on humans. The young man is keeping hope alive that his work will in fact be the answer to a dreaded disease that has taken the lives of many, so until then, he tells the New York Daily News, “If you don’t plan to succeed, you’re planning to fail.” Beauty Within~Teen Esteem is watching this young man.