TAMPA — Daniel Park’s Wesley Chapel bedroom laboratory doesn’t have bubbling beakers or rows of test tubes or any gleaming microscopes.
Instead, the King High senior has a pair of Dell Windows computers, running powerful open-source software, powered mostly by his own curiosity.
That humble setup, however, helped Park engineer something that captured the top prize for seniors at the recent Florida Invention Convention: a computationally designed drug candidate for treating anxiety and depression, derived from tarantula venom.
It’s a project that sounds more like the work of a university research team than a high school student. But for Park, it is rooted in two of his interests, mental health and biotechnology.
“I definitely wanted to focus on mental health,” he said, noting that he has talked with friends and family that have struggled with anxiety and depression. “I think that’s a really important issue, and I wanted to use science and biology, which I’m really interested in, to actually help provide a solution.”
Turning venoms into therapies is nothing new, but it is a field that Park has read a lot about and was drawn to. He learned that venoms naturally target the same receptors and pathways in the body that modern drugs often try to reach.
“And a lot of scientists nowadays are actually trying to turn venoms into drugs, because they target the same parts of the body that these drugs are trying to target as well,” Park said. “So I thought that was a really cool thing. I thought that was like, magic, and I wanted to try and explore that.”
What if he could take a dangerous substance and re-engineer it into something that heals?
That’s where the tarantula comes in. The venom Park chose to work with comes from a Trinidad tarantula and contains the toxin psalmotoxin, which has shown some promise in other treatments.
The venom targets a part of the brain called the amygdala, or the brain’s fear and stress center. When that area is overactive, it’s often linked to anxiety and depression.
So Park worked on tweaking the venom and eliminating its danger, designing it to calm an overactive fear response in the brain.
“That’s basically what I did,” he said. “I took the structure of the venom protein and changed it so it could become something helpful instead of harmful.”
He figured if he could alter the molecular structure so it was less toxic, it could cross into the brain more safely. That would solve the problem of having to inject it directly into the brain.
Park used computers running open-source software developed by universities around the world. He built and tested models of how his modified venom would behave. Advanced simulations that predict how the engineered protein binds to the brain, how stable it is and if it will do what Park hopes — calm the brain’s stress response.
Computationally, at least, it has been a success. He has tested biological outcomes without a single test tube.
“I ran multiple simulations with different tools, and they all showed favorable results,” Park said.
What Park has is a model. The next step, and it’s a big one, is into the lab, where years of lab work and real-world testing awaits.
“I would say that I’m quite confident that this is actually going to work in the real world,” Park said. “But I would definitely agree that there is a chance it might not work, and that’s where I want to go with clinical trials.”
Park, who is committed to Brown University and will study molecular biology/biochemistry, says he is eager to get to college where he expects lab access will be available to test his design.
Encouraged by his parents, Dr. Sanghoon Park, a professor of educational technology at USF and Dr. Jung Lim, a Learning Designer at USF, Park has taken on a number of ambitious projects over the years, entering science fairs since elementary school at Turner-Bartels K-8 and Cypress Creek Middle School.
As a freshman at King, he used glowing mushrooms to detect lead pollution, showing they emitted less light in contaminated environments. More recently, he used computational biology to study how different bacterial proteins were able to break down pollutants on Earth and even on Mars.
“Curiosity is a very big part of who I am,” he said.
Those questions he raised but couldn’t solve at a younger age are now being harnessed by Park. His curiosity has carried him to the Florida Invention Convention, where students are rewarded for designing original inventions that attempt to solve real-world problems, which he first entered as a sophomore and now promotes as an ambassador.
In 2024, Park became the first Florida student to win Best in Show at the RTX Invention Convention Americas.
In June, he will represent the state at the Invention Convention Nationals at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan, where his project could take its first steps to the next level.
“It will be really awesome,” he said. “I’m also shooting for the patent application award, which is another next step I want to take, because that just gives us the opportunity to work with lawyers to apply for a patent. And I think that’s really cool, too.”
For now, his work is happening on a laptop. But it looks like it won’t be staying there for long.
Other winners
Fifth grade
Evelyn Hill, Pride Elementary
Second place — Project: “Cool Catcher”
Seventh grade
Tritiya Rajagopal, Williams Middle Magnet
Third place — Project: “Multimodal Cancer/Tumor Finder: A Non-Invasive Scanner”
Eighth grade
Mahi Patel, Liberty Middle School
Second place — Project: “Biodegradable Foam Sheets via Pectin Crosslinking Study”
Yana Brahmankar, Williams Middle Magnet
Third place — Project: “Wristband Alert: A Simple Color-Changing Wristband for Early Detection”
10th grade
Garg Yashika, Sarayi Karedla, and Navita Mishra, Middleton High School
First place — Project: “NeuroPath: Machine Learning for Early Detection of Cognitive”
Ishanvi Sabniveesu, Steinbrenner High School
Third place — Project: “AI Enabled Smart Cane for the Visually Impaired: CareCane”
11th grade
Nayana Jayakumar, Hillsborough High School
Third place — Project: “ANN TO Predict Future Orbital States Across Three Orbits”
12th grade
Daniel Park, King High School
First place — Project: “Psamacross: A Venom-Derived Anxiety Depression Medication”
Special area awards
Sahil Patel, Steinbrenner High School
Quadric IT award — Project: “Validation of a Smartphone-Based Handheld LSCI Device”
Yana Brahmankar, Williams Middle Magnet
Amgen award — Project: “Wristband Alert: A Simple Color-Changing Wristband for Early Detection”
Ishanvi Sabniveesu, Steinbrenner High School
Nault Launch award – Project: “Biogradable Bite Block”
Yashika Garg, Sarayu Karedla, and Navita Mishra, Middleton High School
Nault Launch award – Project: “NeuroPath: Machine Learning for Early Detection of Cognitive”
Tanishka Akanksha, Williams Middle Magnet
Best display board award — Project: “A Prototype for Radiographic pH Chromatic Mapping in Soil”
Aryan Juneja, Avik Kalra, Hemaprabaa Rajakumar, Mahika Shah, Aashi Verma, and Aditya Chaube, Walker Middle Magnet
Best display board award — Project: “TerraBox”
Ishanvi Sabniveesu, Steinbrenner High School
Best presentation award — Project: “AI Enabled Smart Cane for the Visibly Impaired”