About


Started because one family kept being told the wrong thing

Sympify is a program of Fueling Futures Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. It is built and run by students, with mentorship from researchers and clinicians.

Our story

A grandmother spent fifteen years looking for an answer. She saw more than twenty doctors about a persistent, worsening skin condition. Each time it was read as common dermatitis. Her family spent tens of thousands of dollars on treatments, several of which made her symptoms worse.

The eventual diagnosis was stage 4b T-cell lymphoma. She died in June 2024.

It is not possible to say what an earlier answer would have changed, and this website will not claim otherwise. What her family could see clearly was a pattern in how the fifteen years had gone: at each visit the most common explanation was considered, treatment for it was tried, and when it did not work the cycle restarted — without the question of what else it might be being seriously opened.

That gap is what Sympify was built for. Not to answer the question, but to make it easier to ask: given everything I am actually experiencing, what else is associated with this?

Mission

To help people see a broader range of explanations for their symptoms, and to give them something organized enough to be useful in a real appointment — while being honest that a website cannot diagnose anyone.

Our approach

  • Explore, don't predict. Sympify is a retrieval system over public reference information, not a model that guesses what you have.
  • Say what we can prove. Research claims must be backed by a generated artifact. Clinical accuracy claims are prohibited outright.
  • Show the limits. Inferred symptoms are labelled as inferred; match scores are explained as overlap, not probability.
  • Stay free, stay small on data. No accounts, no tracking on this website, and no more information collected than the tool needs.

Timeline


How Sympify got here

  1. Sympify founded

    Started by high school students after a family member spent fifteen years without an accurate diagnosis.

  2. Mayo Clinic reference material adopted

    Sympify began drawing on publicly available Mayo Clinic symptom and condition reference material.

  3. Incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

    Fueling Futures Foundation, doing business as Sympify.

  4. First prototype built

  5. Provisional patent filed

  6. Full-scale launch

    Launch event hosted at USC, with student presentations and guest speakers.

  7. Congressional Community Impact Award

  8. First international chapter established

  9. First research paper published

Team


Who builds Sympify

Leadership and directors are listed here. Sympify has 70 members across three departments — this page shows the people who lead them rather than every profile.

Executive leadership

Founders and organization-wide leadership.

Jalen Cai

Founder; Manager of the Research Department

Research

Jalen is currently attending Diamond Bar High School in the Class of '27. Since 8th grade, he has worked on lab research projects at USC targeting neurodegenerative diseases and AI machine learning models with several published posters and manuscripts. With a keen interest in scientific research and the human mind, he strives to become a neuroscientist and a pioneer in the medical and tech fields. He also participates in a wide range of school activities like Water Polo, swimming, and percussion, and is the drummer and producer at the 'Post-Credits' rock band.

Milin Zhu

Cofounder

Milin Zhu is a student at Diamond Bar High School, Class of 2027, and the cofounder of Sympify. She is passionate about law, public systems, and the ways policy shapes everyday life. She is a nationally ranked debater, a member of her school's mock trial team, and a debate coach who works with younger students on public speaking. She has also written policy briefs, contributed to legal and policy-focused projects, and completed a legal internship where she worked on research, writing, and professional communications. In addition, she is developing a podcast focused on law, policy, and student perspectives.

Yi (Devin) Sun

Cofounder

Devin Sun is a student at Fairmont Preparatory Academy, Class of 2027, with a strong interest in applying data-driven approaches to biomedical research and neuroscience. He is drawn to questions at the intersection of science and computation — particularly how structured data, algorithmic reasoning, and AI can make complex medical and scientific information more accessible and actionable. Outside of academics, Devin enjoys hiking and spending time outdoors, where he brings the same attentiveness and curiosity he applies to his research.

Department leadership

Leads for the research, technology and business departments.

Travis Shen

Director; Business Team Lead

Business

Travis Shen is an incoming freshman at the University of Michigan. He takes an interest in swimming and enjoys the competition around him. He is on the BREA swim team and part of the SENIOR group. He also plays the cello and is playing for the 'Symphony Orchestra' at his school. In his free time, he loves to hang out with friends and learn new things. He has taken on the opportunity to lead the Business team at Sympify as he thinks this will greatly benefit him in college and the real world.

Borui (Yon) Hua

Director; Engineering

Technology

Borui (Yon) Hua is a Junior CO'28 from Eleanor Roosevelt High School and serves as one of the coders on the Sympify team. Outside of this environment, he is a fully STEM-engaged person with 4 years of competition experience and world-level achievements in robotics and is also contributing as an IT director for another youth group.

Directors

Directors contributing across programs, outreach and engineering.

Callie Luo

Director

Callie Luo is a senior at Diamond Bar High School CO'27. She has a strong interest in pre-med, and regularly volunteers at Pomona Valley Hospital. She hopes to pursue a path in the medical field in the future.

Jeremy Cai

Director

Jeremy is currently attending the University of Connecticut, set to graduate in December 2026. Jeremy has been interested in statistics and actuarial science since sophomore year of high school, and has taken multiple opportunities since then to further that interest. He has also passed an actuarial exam, and is already on the way to obtain a Fellow designation. Jeremy is also involved in the Cantonese Student Association on his university campus and is interested in hiking, reading, and watching movies.

Catherine Hu

Director

Catherine Hu has an interest and passion in the pre-med field, motivated by a desire to help others. Catherine is now actively involved in volunteer work and is in the process of establishing her own nonprofit organization. Additionally, she participates in AMC and other math competitions. Catherine's ultimate goal is to make a positive impact through community service and by researching what the world needs and how she can help others.

Christie Shaw

Director

Christie Shaw is a student at Diamond Bar High School Co'27. She is a part of the school's student leadership team and manages school events. She enjoys participating and competing in FBLA, with a strong interest in pursuing business in the future.

Portrait of Ip Yan He

Ip Yan He

Director

Yan He is a sophomore at Simon's Rock at Bard College with a strong interest in Biology and pharmaceutical science. In her free time she enjoys snowboarding, tennis and journaling. She is also a member of the varsity tennis team.

Ella Mak

Director

Ella is currently a senior at Glen A. Wilson High School. Her love for science began in 4th grade, when she first joined her elementary school Science Olympiad team. Since then, she's helped her high school team become regional champions, and individually won 1st in her event at the Science Olympiad State Championships. Her commitment to science doesn't end there — an avid HOSA member, Ella has helped people through volunteer work and attended numerous walks to raise awareness and research funds for mental health and sarcoma. Ella aspires to become an oncologist in the future, driven by a passion for medicine and her goal to make a difference in the lives of those affected by cancer. Aside from her academic achievements, Ella is also an exceptional athlete: she's won 2 international badminton titles, is a 2x CIF champion, and has led her team as captain to become the D1 Champions.

Wendy Shih

Director

Wendy Shih is currently attending Diamond Bar High School in the Class of 2027. She has a strong interest in the complex workings of the brain, and is a passionate mental health advocate as well. She has raised awareness for mental health issues through workshops and public speaking sessions, and hopes to educate more people on the relationship between the brain and mental illnesses. In her free time, she is involved in a variety of activities such as band, a science-based magazine, private tutoring, and engaging in meaningful conversations from literature.

Advisors & mentors

Researchers and professionals who advise or mentor Sympify. Listing does not imply endorsement of the application by their institutions.

Daryl Davies, PhD

Research advisor

Research mentorship

Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education and Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. He oversees the development of undergraduate majors and minors, directs the master's program in drug development management, and advises the Trojan Admission Pre-Pharmacy (TAP) program. He directs a research team focused on novel therapeutics for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and alcoholism.

Biographies are written by the members themselves and reproduced as supplied, with only spelling and punctuation corrected.

Partners & collaborators


What each relationship actually is

These are genuinely different kinds of relationship, so they are grouped by what they involve rather than shown as one undifferentiated logo wall. None of them is an endorsement of Sympify.

Data & reference sources

Publicly available medical reference material that Sympify links to or draws condition information from. A reference source is not a sponsor and does not review, endorse or supervise Sympify.

Mayo Clinic

The Sympify application draws on publicly available Mayo Clinic symptom and condition reference material, and links users to Mayo Clinic pages to read more about a condition.

Updated September 2026

Research mentorship

Researchers and academic groups who advise or mentor Sympify students on research methods. Mentorship is an individual relationship and does not represent an institutional endorsement.

Clinical & community collaboration

Hospitals, clinics and community organizations Sympify has worked with on outreach, education or volunteering. These are program collaborations, not clinical deployments of the application.

Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School

Hospital collaborator on community health outreach.

Updated September 2026

Nanjing Red Cross Kangning Hospital

Hospital collaborator on community health outreach.

Updated September 2026

Technology

Organizations that contribute technical training, tooling or engineering support.

CodingMind

Technology education collaborator supporting Sympify student engineers.

Updated September 2026

Program & event collaboration

Organizations that have co-hosted or supported a Sympify program or event.

CoreHumanity

Nonprofit collaborator on community programs.

Updated September 2026

Chapter network

Schools hosting a Sympify student chapter. A school chapter is a student group, not an institutional partnership — the previous website listed schools alongside hospitals and universities, which blurred that distinction.

See the chapter network

The organization

Legal name
Fueling Futures Foundation
Operating as
Sympify
Status
501(c)(3) nonprofit
EIN
99-1955121

Join the people building it.

Research, technology and business — Sympify runs on students who wanted to work on something real.