Student Inventors Honored

Two students doing research in the chemical sciences received top honors during the 2010 Collegiate Inventors Competition, a program of the nonprofit Invent Now that recognizes extraordinary achievements by student inventors. The winners were announced on Oct. 27 in Washington, D.C.

In the graduate student category, Alice Chen, a doctoral candidate in the Harvard University-Massachusetts Institute of Technology joint program in Health Sciences & Technology, received the top prize of $15,000 for her work with tissue-engineered liver mimetics in mice. Chen developed a way to implant a matrix containing human liver cells into mice, an approach that could be useful for drug testing and other therapeutic applications. Chen plans on going into industry after she graduates. “I want to be part of a team that encourages out-of-the-box thinking because I think that is the only way to transform the world,” she says.

In the undergraduate student category, Mark Jensen, who graduated this year with a degree in chemical engineering from Brigham Young University, received the top prize of $10,000 for his methodology to manufacture composite lattice-pole structures. He formed a company, Altus Poles, to develop and manufacture structural composites for the pole, tower, and aircraft construction industries. “A lot of people discount themselves because they think they’re too young” to do science, he says. “But if people really want to, they can find so many opportunities.”

The competition is sponsored by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and the Abbott Fund, the nonprofit foundation of Abbott Laboratories.