Harry Nickerson

I turn my own experience with retinitis pigmentosa into a mission: making eye disease diagnosis accessible to everyone.

My app As I See It uses AI to simulate visual impairments through your camera, helping sighted people understand what it's like to live with conditions like RP.

I also build affordable retinal cameras that capture detailed images without pupil dilation, recognized by Ingenious+ as an innovation that expands eye screening to underserved communities.

My newest work moves from detecting RP to treating it. About 1 in 4,000 people have retinitis pigmentosa, and one common cause is the P23H mutation in rhodopsin, which makes the protein misfold so the cell destroys it, killing photoreceptors and stealing vision. There are no approved treatments.

I built a computational drug discovery pipeline using AutoDock Vina and GROMACS to find molecules that stabilize P23H rhodopsin. It screens for strong binding at the retinal pocket, then tests whether the molecule holds the protein together in a realistic membrane using molecular dynamics simulations. After screening 17,375 compounds, one candidate, hnRP94450, restored near-normal stability, making treated proteins behave like healthy rhodopsin across 500 nanoseconds of simulation.

Working with Fighting Blindness Canada and international research institutes, I'm proving that a teenager from Halifax can make a real impact on global health.