From Maps to Medicine

For most of us, bedsores are an afterthought, the cost of long hospital stays. For Maya Trutschl, they became the beginning of an idea. Before she turned 18, she had already designed a device—combining sensors and AI—that could anticipate those sores before they appeared, giving doctors time to act.

Her path began in maps. As a middle schooler in Shreveport, Maya twice entered GGI’s statewide competition, using GIS to tell the stories about her city—of architects Sam and Bill Wiener’s modern homes and buildings startling a traditional town, and of the yellow fever pandemic that left scars visible today.

Maya’s story about the Wiener’s won the nationwide competition.

“I learned how to research and find resources, how to input data and how to engage audiences with different types of stories,” she recalls. “And those skills have stayed with me.”

She will study medical engineering at a top university, then invent medical devices that ease suffering and restore wholeness. “I want to solve real-world problems.”