Adding to the numerous accolades received during her time at King, Antonia Kolb ’24 received  the Diana Award this month, a prestigious award named for the late Princess of Wales. Kolb was again recognized for her work in developing the app DETICKT IT, a location-based tick-risk assessment tool that assists people in detecting the likelihood of tick-borne diseases through machine learning.

"It was an absolute honor to be named a 2024 Diana Award recipient among other talented and inspiring individuals,” said Kolb, who is in her first year at Harvard University studying environmental science and engineering and economics. Kolb added that awards like these have helped DETICKT IT expand her mission to raise awareness of tick-borne diseases and further research them.

Prince William, Prince of Wales,  and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, established the award in 1999 to honor and celebrate their mother’s belief in the power of young people to change the world. Both were present at the virtual award ceremony where Kolb and 200 fellow honorees from around the world were recognized on Thursday, December 5.

“I know my mother, in whose memory you receive the Diana Award today, would be immensely proud of you. I hope this award helps you to further champion your cause and support those around you,” said Prince William in the letter Antonia received. “Thank you for your dedication. You are extraordinary.”

Kolb, who was part of King’s Advanced Science Program for Independent Research and Engineering (ASPIRE), sought the advice of Director of Science Research Victoria Schulman when considering this award. Schulman encouraged her to submit her work for the Diana Award.

“I was thrilled she sought my opinion,” said Schulman, expressing her pride in Kolb’s ongoing success. “I hope it's clear to Antonia and to other alums that I'm happy to continue supporting them by writing recommendations and nominations even after they have moved on from King.”

Kolb’s award-winning work stems from her personal experience of contracting a life-threatening tick-borne infection which revealed a lack of readily available information about such diseases.

During her time at King, Kolb found that previous studies using tick identification often had a margin of error that was too broad for diagnosis. 

She sought to lessen the margin and found that adding the geographic location of the tick in question to the disease profile would increase the accuracy of the risk assessment. By embedding the app with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s spatiotemporal tick and pathogen surveillance statistics, she reduced the margin of error improving the accuracy of the information available to the user.

Tick-borne diseases have plagued Connecticut for decades, with Lyme, Connecticut serving as the place where the disease by that name was discovered in 1975. The Connecticut Department of Public Health reports about 3,000 cases yearly to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but the CDC estimates actual cases at ten times that number. DETICKT IT will be a powerful resource for the state’s residents. 

DETICKT IT has over 3,000 downloads and remains free to the public, helping countless people receive vital, timely medical care.  

The Diana Award is the most recent of many accolades Kolb has earned since creating the app. Her research was published in the Harvard Undergraduate Research Journal. She won the Data Science and Bioinformatics category at the Connecticut Science and Engineering Fair and earned third place at the International Science & Engineering Fair, second place at the National Junior Science & Humanities Symposium, and was named a Top Scholar in the Regeneron National Science Talent Search. Her project manuscript was selected out of 400 submissions for publication by the prestigious Columbia Junior Science Journal, and Congressman Jim Himes selected DETICKT IT as the winner of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Connecticut’s Fourth District.