Adam Kovalčík didn't expect to win big when he flew from his small village in Slovakia to an international science competition in Ohio. Still, the 19-year-old student walked away with the event's $100,000 top prize and a breakthrough idea for making lifesaving antiviral drugs out of corn husks.
At this year's Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in Columbus, judges awarded the George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award to Kovalčík, whose drug production method — as Business Insider reported — simplified the process by using corn husks in place of more costly ingredients.
Kovalčík had aimed to make galidesivir cheaper and faster to produce. The experimental drug targets RNA viruses, including Ebola, Zika, and COVID-19. He replaced standard starting materials with furfuryl alcohol, a compound that comes from corn waste.
Rather than assembling the molecule in multiple stages, he formed the core sugar in seven reactions — ultimately developing a 10-step method, down from the conventional 15. The approach cuts production time from nine to five days and slashes the cost per gram from $75 to just $12.50.
While Kovalčík's method would need to go through clinical trials before any wide-scale applications (and student research at the fair didn't undergo the peer-review process), the Regeneron judges were impressed and called his presentation airtight.
"I cannot describe this feeling," Kovalčík told Business Insider after the live ceremony. He said he was surprised to win, especially coming from a small Slovak village.
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After the competition, he filed a preliminary patent and returned to his university lab to continue refining the synthesis. According to early computer modeling, one new molecule from that work may bind more effectively to viral enzymes than galidesivir.
He says he hopes to apply the same method to other materials, including a side project that turns corn waste into fragrance compounds. This waste-based, low-impact chemistry aligns with the type of environmental innovations that attract support.
His work joins a growing movement of scientists rethinking food waste, like turning banana peels into fuel or orange peels into bioplastics, and it shows how big innovations or breakthroughs can come from small labs.
Work such as Kovalčík's builds on that progress and shows how local actions can grow with the right support. Chris RoDee, chemist and chair of the judging committee and retired patent examiner, told Business Insider: "This could be a huge step to help prevent some of these RNA viruses."
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