Meet the Southlake teen already making his mark in the medical world

From a very real experience Manu Bala was inspired to use artificial intelligence to prevent others from going through the same thing.

He watched his grandfather pass out in front of him before Manu entered high school. It was a frightening moment he doesn’t want to endure again.

“I knew he had diabetes mellitus and was taking insulin shots. We later found out he passed out from a heart attack, and his cardiologist told us he had risk factors for heart disease,” Bala said. “Though his risk factors were there for so long we couldn’t do anything to prevent his heart attack, I learned with more research that AI can be used to predict events and patterns of behavior.

“I wanted to explore that in health care and found that health care events could be predicted and risk of diseases could be assessed using AI. If I am able to understand and stratify risk using AI, then I would be able to prevent bad disease outcomes.”

His grandfather survived and is still alive. Now, Bala plans to study AI even further when he attends college next year following graduation from The Clariden School in Southlake. He has his sights set on Rice, the University of Texas, Emory or Cornell.

“I was excited about the fact that AI could help understand the risk of diseases even without getting in contact with a patient,” he said. “Hence, I wanted to do projects in AI so that it could help doctors know more about the patient even before they meet them.”

Bala’s father is a physician, so he’d been thinking about following him into that field already. He also has a younger sister who is already interested in a career in psychology.

Bala is also an athlete as he competes in Universal Tennis Rating tournaments. He’s also an amateur photographer.

While Clariden doesn’t have a class ranking system, Bala’s International Baccalaureate grade point average was 4.9.

Presentations throughout the world

In other words, he’s very smart. So smart that he’s already co-authoring and making academic study presentations throughout the U.S. and abroad.

In 2023 he presented at the International Forum on Research Excellence Conference in Los Angeles on the impact of mental health disorders on chronic disease progression. His project estimated how mental health problems can influence chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease compared to patients who do not have mental health diseases.

He said he was motivated by an insulin-using diabetic friend who missed several days of school.

“I was intrigued if his sugars were not well controlled because of his mental issues,” Bala said. “I realized through research that mental health conditions can make a lot of chronic conditions worse and also costs a lot more to treat them.”

He returned to the conference in 2024, this time in Washington. He presented on how to use image abstraction software on angiographic images to identify blocked blood vessels. Using Python software, his accuracy was 74%.

“I think if we have AI helping doctors in identifying blocked blood vessels, doctors can use AI to identify which patients are at risk of worsening disease and then get an angiogram using CT scanners,” he said. “AI programs can identify the blockages and also predict which patients would eventually have a heart attack or stroke.”

Mano Ellappan, a senior research manager at Texas Research Institute, worked with Bala on his 2023 and 2024 presentations.

“He soon began contributing his own research ideas, working on several projects that he later presented at international student research meetings,” she recalled. “Manu is both process and outcome driven. His ability to balance rigorous research with his school responsibilities was impressive.”

More international confereces to come

Bala said the opportunity to present at an international conference with so many smart students and mentors from all over the world was “super exciting.”

“It is great for networking with other high school kids, college students and judges,” he said.

And he’s not finished. He’s been selected to make a presentation at the International Society of Neuroscience Conference in Malaysia in 2026.

He was invited based on a publication he did titled “Impact of Mental Health on Chronic Conditions and Cost Implications — Leveraging Data to Predict Risk.”

“I learned from my summer online course from Stanford University that clinical utility is important while we develop AI algorithms,” he said. “Clinical utility is assessed by tweaking our models to see if we are able to predict hospitalizations or re-admissions.”

Presentations at medical conferences ‘rare for a high school student’

Dr. Imran Siddiqui, vice chair of TCU’s Burnett Department of Medical Education, has been a mentor to Bala. He praised his serious attitude toward constantly learning.

“He listens carefully when new ideas are explained and keeps working until he understands them well,” Siddiqui said. “Because of this, he has been able to do research and even present his work at major medical conferences, which is very rare for a high school student.

“Along with his interest in AI and medicine, he balances a very heavy IB schedule, 14 courses, six at higher level, with a 4.9 GPA, while also completing more than 320 volunteer hours, many in research and at a mental health institution.”

Bala said he ultimately wants to combine a strong knowledge of AI with a practice of medicine, using this combination to create better health care policies.

“To draft good policies, I need to understand medicine, how it is practiced and also fully use the power of AI to understand healthcare data,” he said. “I would also like to practice preventive medicine part time.”

He’d also like to see more students his age and younger given more opportunities to study AI.

“Schools could potentially add electives on research and artificial intelligence at high school so we are at pace when compared to some schools in California and Florida,” he said.