Top Teens

Meet the 13 winners of the 2016 Bethesda Magazine Extraordinary Teen Awards

April 7, 2016 1:24 p.m.

Joseph Kaperst

Senior, Walt Whitman High School

Joseph Kaperst was out of his element. As a freshman in a computer science class at Walt Whitman High School in 2012-2013, the Bethesda teen struggled to grasp concepts that the rest of the class already seemed to know. He eventually taught himself the concepts by breaking them down in a way he could understand. “I knew that if I gave it my all and was still struggling, other kids were probably struggling, too,” says Joseph, now 17. “And I figured my way of learning wasn’t unique to me.”

So when Joseph’s younger sister took the same course the following year, he started to develop a computer programming curriculum based on his ideas. In 2014, he started a Washington, D.C., chapter of CoderDojo, an international computer programming club for kids—though most chapters are run by adults. He recruited his sister and some friends, and they began teaching computer science to kids as young as 6 at regular club meetings. On busy Saturdays, 25 to 30 kids have attended the free workshops at locations that include the Tenley-Friendship Library and the startup incubator 1776.

Joseph applied his skills during an internship last summer with the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications in Bethesda.

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He successfully used computational methods to cull research literature that shed light on the role of copper in Parkinson’s disease.

“This was practically a graduate-level project,” says Tom Rindflesch, an information research specialist at the center and Joseph’s internship supervisor. “Not only is he intellectually gifted, but he is mature, grounded and kind.”

Joseph has a 4.0 GPA and is co-captain of the Congress Team within Whitman’s Speech & Debate Team. He plans to study computer science and education at Stanford University.

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