At 17, Plano teen's AI air-quality project serves 1,000 Texans, wins $10K

A 17-year-old student from Plano, Texas, has built an artificial intelligence tool to track air pollution in vulnerable neighborhoods, winning a national award and $10,000 for his work. Nathan Tan started the non-profit group Shared Skies Initiative to fight environmental inequality across Dallas, where poorer communities and minority families often breathe dirtier air but lack local pollution monitors. His work earned him the 2026 Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, an annual award given to 25 outstanding young leaders across the United States and Canada.Personal struggles spark projectAccording to North Texas E-News, Tan was inspired to act by his own health struggles and local volunteering. The teenager suffers from a respiratory illness and has lost family members to lung cancer. While tutoring primary school children in West Dallas, a student asked him why the air outside looked so hazy. When Tan looked into the issue, he found that children in West Dallas suffer from asthma at rates several times higher than the Texas state average. Despite the health risks, only one official monitoring station covered an area of more than 900 square miles, leaving whole neighborhoods without reliable air data.Smart code fills monitoring gapsBuying and installing physical air sensors across every street was far too expensive. To solve this, Tan created a computer program that uses machine learning to predict pollution levels in areas without physical monitors, using existing physical sensors to check the calculations. Today, around 1,000 Texas residents use his live online map to check local air quality in real time. Tan believes scientific research should help people directly in their daily lives. “Research only makes a difference when it reaches the people it is about,” Tan said. “A paper in a journal won't protect a child from polluted air as he walks to school, but a bilingual booklet a mother can read will.”Free books and clean air unitsAlongside the digital map, the Shared Skies Initiative provides practical help to local families. As reported by Plano Magazine, Tan’s team wrote a simple 50-page guide to air pollution in English and Spanish, giving copies to more than 60 low-income schools and reaching roughly 30,000 pupils. The group has trained 300 young ambassadors to read air data and help their families stay safe from pollution. They have also built and handed out 50 homemade air filters—which clear up to 95 per cent of indoor dust and smoke—along with 10,000 protective KN95 face masks. The team also speaks out on local environmental issues. They have organized letter-writing campaigns and given testimony at city council meetings, asking local officials to shut down an industrial shingle plant located right next to homes in West Dallas.National honor for young leadersThe Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes awards $10,000 to 15 top winners each year to help fund their university studies or expand their community projects. Tan is one of two winners chosen from Texas in 2026. The prize was created by author T. A. Barron to highlight young people making a real difference to communities and the environment. “Nothing is more inspiring than stories about heroic people who have truly made a difference to the world,” Barron said in a press release. “And we need our heroes today more than ever. Not celebrities, but heroes – people whose character can inspire us all. That is the purpose of the Barron Prize: to shine the spotlight on these amazing young people so that their stories will inspire others.”