Meet the Collegiate Inventor Competition Winners

Recognizing the innovative ideas of today’s college and university students, the Collegiate Inventors Competition, a program of Invent Now, recently announced that a way to implant human liver cells in mice to facilitate drug testing and a way to manufacture composite structural poles have won top honors in this year’s competition.

Alice Chen

Alice Chen

Alice Chen of the Harvard/MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program received the $15,000 graduate first prize for her work with tissue-engineered liver mimetics in mice, and Mark Jensen of Brigham Young University, received the $10,000 undergraduate first prize for his manufacturing methods for composite lattice pole structures.

The Competition, sponsored by the Abbott Fund, the non-profit foundation of the global health care company Abbott, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), announced the winners this morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Lieberman-Aiden

Lieberman-Aiden

Graduate students Erez Lieberman-Aiden and Nynke van Berkum, of Harvard/MIT and the University of Massachusetts Medical School received second prize for their method for genome sequencing in three dimensions and received $10,000.

Van Berkum

Van Berkum

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Bozhi Tian and Tzahi Cohen-Karni of Harvard received third prize  for their three-dimensional, flexible nanoscale field effect transistors used as intracellular probes and received $5,000.

Undergraduate students Devon Anderson, Jonathan Guerrette, and Nathan Niparko of Dartmouth were the second prize winners in their their creation for an absorbent, bioresorbable surgical sponge; and Leyla Isik, Salina Khushal, Michael Shen, and Emilie Yeh of Johns Hopkins University received third prize for an intelligent drill meant for improved orthopedic surgery.

The Collegiate Inventors Competition promotes innovation by recognizing inventors and scientists early in their careers, and rewarding students’ often pioneering ideas as they address the problems of today’s world.  Past finalists and winners have gone on to start their own companies based on their inventions, win prestigious fellowships and grants and receive national attention for their work.  Introduced in 1990, the Competition has awarded more than $1 million to winning students for their innovative achievements through the help of its sponsors. For more information on the Competition and past winners, visit www.invent.org/collegiate.  For more information about Abbott and the Abbott Fund, visit www.abbott.com and www.abbottfund.org, and for more information about the USPTO, visit www.uspto.gov.