When Everett Kroll was first becoming interested in science, he never thought he would be able to make a difference in the world. Yet here he is, coming off of a trip to the ISEF International Science Fair with a way to change the lives of people in need.

Kroll spent most of last year working on a prototype for a 3-D printed prosthetic leg. With Kroll’s model, the price for a working prosthetic would be around $100. The average price ranges anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000, according to disabled-world.com.

“It is still a work in progress, but I do have working prototypes and I’m testing on it regularly,” said Kroll. While he does have functioning prototypes, Kroll still is not satisfied. “I want to make it more anatomically correct,” Kroll said. He plans to do a study on the running team to perfect his design.

Kroll credits much of his success to his mentors. He has worked with people from 3M who work with prosthetics for a living. He gets help from teachers as well. But it is clear that he is a hard worker, and he learns from his mistakes.

“I was able to realize that a failure was not really a failure,” Kroll said in an interview with WCCO. “It was a place to learn, or a place to keep on developing.”

Kroll has also had an effect on his peers. Sophomore Max Vogel went to the state science fair with Kroll.

“Over the past few years of knowing Everett, I have come to understand our shared love for science, and his drive to conduct the best research that he can,” Vogel said.

When Kroll was growing up, not many people could have seen this in his future. In fact, Kroll himself never thought he would be able to make this kind of an impact on the world.

“I was the kid that fidgeted in class. I needed to see the principal because I was disruptive,” Kroll said. “In fact, when I got the chance to go to ISEF, I was crying, because it’s harder to get into ISEF than it is to graduate MIT at the top of your class. It is just an amazing honor. If you would have looked at me when I was seven or eight, this would have never been on my mind.”

Kroll has gotten plenty of attention for his work, doing an interview with WCCO and being featured on a newscast, but it has not gone to his head.

“It’s humbling, I guess. Because there are people that have one way better and greater things, and I’m just one kid in high school, and there are millions of kids like me. But it’s cool that I can design something that’ll change someone’s life. I think that’s one reason I stuck with the project. It’s hard to stick with it sometimes, whether it’s three o’clock in the morning writing a research paper or finishing a study proposal for a new test I want to do, and it’s cool to me that I can complete it and help somebody,” Kroll added.