Winners :: Lemelson-CALTECH Student Prize

Winners

2011 Winner and Finalist

Guoan Zheng, a graduate student in Electrical Engineering working with Professor Changhuei Yang, is the winner of this year's $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Caltech Student Prize. He was awarded the prize for his innovative development of an on-chip, inexpensive microscopy imaging technology with many potential applications, including improved diagnostics for malaria and other blood-borne diseases in the developing world. [Press Coverage]

Wendian "Leo" Shi, a graduate student in Electrical Engineering working with Professor Yu-Chong Tai, is the winner of $10,000 Caltech finalist prize in innovation generously donated by alumnus Michael W. Hunkapiller. Shi received the prize for the invention of the "µCyto," a portable lab-on-a-chip system for determining white blood cell counts for point-of-care diagnostics. [Press Coverage]

2010 Winner and Finalist

Winner Heather Agnew is a Graduate student in Chemistry working with Professor James R. Heath. She received the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Caltech Student Prize for her work on “Protein Capture Agents for Improving the Performance and Stability of Point-of-Care Diagnostics [Requires Flash plugin | Length: 23 min.].”

Finalist Yvonne Chen is a Graduate student in Chemical Engineering working with Professor Christina Smolke. Yvonne received a $10,000 prize generously donated by Caltech Alumni Dr. Michael W. Hunkapiller (PhD '74). She received the prize for her work on “Improving Cell-Based Cancer Therapy with RNA Regulatory Systems [Requires Flash plugin | Length: 19 min.].”

2009 Winner and Finalist

Winner Ophir Vermesh graduate student in Chemistry working with Professor Jim Heath. He received the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Caltech Student Prize for his work on a microfluidics chip called Integrated Blood Barcode Chip (IBBC).

Finalist William Chueh is a graduate student in Materials Science working with Professor Sossina Haile. William received a $10,000 prize for his work on developing a method for heating and cooling cerium dioxide with the effect of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen.