Meet Claire Jiang, 18-year-old NJ student diagnosed with arthritis who built a lab model of the disease

Claire Jian, Bergen County Academies, Hackensack, NJ (Source: Society for Science) An 18-year-old student who was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis in primary school has won seventh place and a $70,000 award in the 2026 Regeneron Science Talent Search for developing a new laboratory cell model of the disease. Claire Jiang, a senior at Bergen County Academies in Hackensack, New Jersey, received the award during the annual competition run by Society for Science in Washington, DC. According to the award announcement from Society for Science and Regeneron, Jiang finished seventh among nearly 2,000 high school applicants from across the United States for her research into juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), the most common form of arthritis in children. Jiang's personal experience with the condition inspired her research. She first developed symptoms at nine years old and wanted to tackle a major problem in paediatric rheumatology: the lack of easy-to-use, disease-specific cell models for laboratory research.Personal experience drives biomedical innovationJiang remembered the sudden start of her illness during a classroom exam in third grade. She developed a fever, swollen j...