About

Hi, I'm Aarush, a high schooler in Cary, North Carolina who's into medicine, public health, and building things with code.

I make websites and apps, do research with health and education data to see what it can tell us, and I shadow doctors to get a real look at what medicine is like up close. I want to be a doctor someday, so I'm trying to learn as much as I can right now.

Outside of school, I enjoy basketball, chess, and playing the piano.

Builds

i.
Web Game
HealthGuessr

A GeoGuessr-style game where you guess a U.S. state from its real CDC health statistics — diabetes, life expectancy, smoking rates and more. Built static-first so it scales to anyone.

ReactTypeScriptD3-geoCDC PLACES
ii.
Data · Policy
Full Plates, Full Potential In Progress

A data investigation of school meal debt and student need across Wake County's 197 public schools: where need concentrates, whether the donation-funded Angel Fund can keep up, and what the crisis says about universal free school meals. Built on state report-card data and a records request to the district, it follows the evidence rather than the assumption. What moves attendance and behavior is making meals universal and removing stigma, not clearing debt after the fact.

PythonPostgreSQLD3-geoNC DPIFOIA
iii.
Data · Health
Within Reach — Carolina Colorectal Equity Map In Progress

A data investigation of colorectal cancer disparities across North Carolina's 100 counties (and Wake County's neighborhoods): where screening lags, where deaths cluster, and which communities have no specialist within reach. Built on open federal data, it layers three things most maps keep apart: screening rates from CDC PLACES, incidence and mortality from the NCI State Cancer Profiles and CDC WONDER, and provider locations from the NPPES registry, all against Census demographics and USDA rurality codes. Colorectal cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death in NC, yet among the most preventable when caught early — which makes a gap in deaths less a story about the disease than about distance, money, and where people live.

PythonGeoPandasMapLibreCDC PLACESNPPES
iv.
iOS App
ShadowMD In Progress

A clinical-reflection and shadowing journal for pre-med students — born from my own first days shadowing a nephrologist, and the notebook I wish I'd had.

React NativeExpoSupabaseOpenAI
v.
Web · CV
Touchless Anatomy

A gesture-controlled anatomy app that uses computer vision to track hand movements through a standard webcam and maps them onto a 3D skeletal model. Rotate, zoom, and select bones in real time without touching the screen — a touchless way to explore spatial anatomy, running entirely in the browser with no backend.

MediaPipeThree.jsWebGLComputer Vision
vi.
In Dev
More in progress In Progress

A few other tools are in development — I'll add them here as they ship.

Research

01
In Dev
More research In Progress

Several other public-health and policy projects are in development. Nothing has been submitted to journals yet.

Writing

Mar 2026

What school lunch debt has to do with public health

Why relieving meal debt might do more for student health than it looks like on paper.

Feb 2026

Teaching anatomy without a touchscreen

Building a gesture-controlled skeleton that runs entirely in the browser.

Jan 2026

What shadowing taught me about building software

The reflection notebook that turned into ShadowMD.

More essays on the writing page.

Designed & built by Aarush Ghadia · Set in Bricolage Grotesque, Figtree & JetBrains Mono.