Nathan Tan. Photo courtesy of Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes.
St. Mark’s School of Texas student Nathan Tan has been named a winner of the 2026 Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes for his work addressing air pollution in Dallas.
Tan, 17, founded Shared Skies Initiative, a nonprofit focused on environmental justice and air quality in West Dallas. He developed a machine-learning model that predicts particulate matter levels in areas without air quality monitors and created a real-time map now used by about 1,000 Texans.
The organization has also distributed a bilingual environmental justice primer to more than 60 low-income schools, trained 300 youth ambassadors and donated 50 student-built air filters and 10,000 KN95 masks.
Tan’s work was inspired in part by years spent tutoring elementary students in West Dallas, his own experience with respiratory illness and family members who died from lung cancer.
“Research only makes a difference when it reaches the people it is about,” Tan said. “A paper in a journal won’t protect a child from polluted air as he walks to school, but a bilingual booklet a mother can read will.”
The Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes annually recognizes 25 young people ages 8 to 18 from across the U.S. and Canada. Fifteen winners receive $10,000 to support their service work or higher education. Tan is one of two Texas recipients this year.
