Competition Recognizes Student Inventors

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

In the graduate category, Alice Chen, 29, a doctoral candidate in Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's 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 category, Mark Jensen, 23, who graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from Brigham Young University, received the top prize of $10,000 for his manufacturing methods for composite lattice pole structures. He formed a company, Altus Poles, to develop and manufacture structural composites for the pole, tower, and aircraft 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."

Graduate students Erez Lieberman-Aiden and Nynke van Berkum of Harvard-MIT Health Sciences & Technology and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, respectively, took second place; and Bozhi Tian and Tzahi Cohen-Karni of Harvard came in third.

Undergraduate students Devon Anderson, Jonathan Guerrette, and Nathan Niparko of Dartmouth University were the second place winners in their category, and Leyla Isik, Salina Khushal, Michael Shen, and Emilie Yeh of Johns Hopkins University placed third.

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