A Gerringong teenager is one of the youngest students to be given a fellowship to the prestigious Harvard Knox University in the United States.Richard White is just 19 but is about to complete an Honours in Statistics degree at the University of Wollongong and will then move to the US to take up the five-year, $120,000 fellowship. Under the guidance of some of the best researchers in the world, he will study a Doctorate of Public Health in Biostatistics - using statistics to help solve some of the greatest medical mysteries. Mr White, who completed the Higher School Certificate at Kiama High School at just 15 and a Bachelor of Advanced Mathematics at UOW last year, said his research would focus on finding a cure for AIDS and discovering genetic connections in mental illness.Mr White originally wanted to become a doctor but during his university degree he learnt the power of maths to help millions of people worldwide."(Being a doctor) is very hands on (but) it's dealing with one case at a time. With public health and biostatistics you're looking at saving millions of people," Mr White said."If you can figure out a way of reducing the number of HIV cases in Africa by 1 per cent, you save 200,000 people."In the future I plan on working for Doctors Without Borders as an epidemiologist. I (also) want to study psychiatric epidemiology and find the underlying causes of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia."Only 15 people worldwide receive the prestigious Harvard fellowship each year.UOW Professor Matt Wand, from the School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics, said it was an enormous achievement."This is one of the world's great statistical groups and is located in a major epicentre of medical and public health research in Boston," Professor Wand said. Mr White said Harvard had one of the three top biostatistics programs in the world."There's opportunities over there that aren't available anywhere else in the world," he said."I can work on HIV research or I could try and work on finding genetic factors in mental illness. There's nowhere else in the world that you can do that.Mr White's incredible achievements follow those of his older brother PJ, who also fast-tracked his education at Kiama High and UOW and is now studying a PhD in pure maths at a Paris university.