Troy, N.Y. — The spirit of invention lives and breathes within the research laboratories, classrooms, hallways, and dorm rooms at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Now, the breakthrough ideas conceived by Rensselaer undergraduate seniors and graduate students can get an additional financial boost with the new $30,000 Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize that will be awarded beginning in the 2007 academic year.
The award is being offered through a partnership between Rensselaer and the Lemelson-MIT Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a nonprofit organization that recognizes outstanding inventors, encourages sustainable new solutions to real-world problems, and enables and inspires young people to pursue creative lives and careers through invention. . . .
The new $30,000 Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize is an extension of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, which has recognized outstanding student inventors at MIT since 1995. Recent winners of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize have invented a personal air vehicle (Carl Dietrich, 2006), new therapies for cancer and stroke (David Berry, 2005), a desktop printer-sized device to mold eyeglass lenses (Saul Griffith, 2004), swarm robots (James McLurkin, 2003), a low-cost rocket engine and aerial surveillance system (Andrew Heafitz, 2002), a “silicon-less” plastic memory chip (Brian Hubert, 2001) and a screenless grain hammermill (Amy Smith, 2000).
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign joins Rensselaer as a new partner institution, and also will begin offering a similar prize for its students. . . .
