Some people are just destined to do great things.
When you meet them, you feel it. You sense their strength of purpose and a drive and focus that will keep them directed on a path toward accomplishment. It may not be clear what that will be in the end, but you know it will be something big. When you meet Darren Lau, you know you’re seeing brilliance in the making.
Darren Lau, a recent graduate of Academy at the Lakes, was named a 2026 Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholar for his AuRING project, putting him in the top 300 high school scientists in the nation, a true honor from the country’s oldest and arguably most prestigious science and math competition.
The full title of Darren’s project is ‘AuRING: A Novel Augmented Reality Intraoperative Neurosurgical System Using a Dual Discriminator Bayesian-Structural Similarity Generative Adversarial Network (D2BS2GAN) for Real-Time Brain Shift Compensation.’ Darren is quick to break this down for better understanding. “The basic premise of this project is a two-part system. The first part is an AI algorithm that I custom developed, that is able to take MRI and ultrasound scans to continuously predict the location of brain tumors as the surgery goes on. And the accuracy is within under a millimeter of predicting the location of the brain tumor. And then it sends that location over to the second part, which is a pair of augmented reality glasses. Augmented reality allows surgeons to see the patient’s brain and what I then do is project a kind of virtual guiding line on top of the neurosurgeons view that guides them to the brain tumor so they don’t need to guess anymore where the brain tumor is,” explained Lau.
The project came to life after a friend of Darren’s had a close call during surgery, inspiring him to do something to help prevent complications in the future. “During brain tumor neurosurgeries, the brain will move around. What that also means is that the brain tumor is moving around with the brain. And right now, surgeons don’t have a really clear way of knowing where the brain tumor is. That could lead to damaging brain tissue, because they have no way to navigate to the tumor accurately. There’s a lot of guess and check work. And that’s what happened to my friend. He had some complications related to it, and luckily, he survived,” shared Lau.
Darren credits Academy at the Lakes and its educators for guiding him along the way. “None of this would have been possible without the school. I’ve been here for almost 14 years, and I got my start in science when Academy pushed all of us to join the science fair. And since then, every single year, they’ve had the resources and infrastructure to help me compete and teachers who are supportive of my scientific journey.”
Allowing students like Darren to grow and explore during their education has been a challenge they embraced wholeheartedly. “We really support trying all the things to see what you like and where your passions are, because once you figure that out, you can just take off. Darren was into science and engineering, and we fostered that growth by allowing him to try different opportunities and supporting him,” explained Colleen McCormick, Science Department Chair and Middle Division Director at Academy at the Lakes. She is also Darren’s mentor at the school who has been instrumental in helping him navigate his path. “One of the hallmarks of being a good scientist is to be curious and to ask good questions. And he asks great questions. I have to learn alongside him to be able to support him in that,” added McCormick.
By being selected as one of the top 300 projects out of 2600 entrants worldwide, Darren earned $2,000 for himself as well as an additional $2,000 for the school. Darren donated his winnings to the school’s STEM program to purchase supplies for their new Maker Lab. Darren’s project also placed first at the Invention Convention US Nationals.
Darren tested the theory of AuRING and spoke to professionals at Moffitt Cancer Center and Cleveland Clinic while developing his project. “It is patent pending, and I’m looking forward to hopefully, in the future, being able to test in a real-life setting,” shared Lau. In the meantime, Darren is setting his sights on pursing a computer science degree with an eye towards a bright future. “The goal for me would be to start a biomedical engineering company built upon computer science software. I’ve seen firsthand how impactful the medical field can be on people’s individual lives, and if we’re able to multiply that across a huge scale, that would be bring a lot of meaning to me,” shared Lau.
Until then, it’s clear Darren will continue to make waves and find new ways to positively impact the lives around him. He is a credit to his school and his community. What he’s shared with the world so far is clearly just the beginning of the brilliance to come.