Past Collegiate Inventors Competition Winners
Learn about the student inventors who have excelled in the Collegiate Inventors Competition®. You can search our past competition winners by name, year or university.
Light-induced Synthesis of Silver Nanoprisms
The trio uses light to try and control the shape of silver nanoprisms. By amending the size and structure of the tiny particles with light, they produce a product with intense optical properties — nanoparticles of different bright colors that could be used for biological labeling, inks, specialized films and cosmetics, just to name a few applications.
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Yunwei Cao
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Rongchao Jin
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Gabriella Metreaux
Liposomase for Generalizable Drug Delivery
Ian Cheong didn't start out in a scientific career. The Singapore native trained to become a lawyer in his home country, and ended up working at a law firm specializing in corporate criminal litigation. Some of the firm's clients were scientists, and as Cheong says, "Science looked like it was too much fun to be left to the scientists." With that, he left the world of law behind and began his scientific studies.
Once at Johns Hopkins, Cheong focused on a main problem in cancer therapy; namely, drugs used in cancer treatment kill the healthy cells as well as the cancer cells. Many cancer drugs are potent, but they are nonspecific, and there is continuous searching for ways to make the drugs more specific.
Cheong has devised a way to target cancerous tumors and release the drugs just in those areas. He begins by injecting bacterial spores into the subject which selectively inhabit the oxygen-poor areas found within cancerous tumors. Next, Cheong puts the cancer-fighting drug in lipid particles and injects these liposomes into the subject. Because the germinated bacterial spores also secrete a protein that makes liposomes fall apart, when the drug-containing liposomes are in the proximity of the tumors, the drug is released only in those specific areas.
In testing conducted on mice, Cheong was astonished at the results. One hundred percent of the mice showed regression of the tumors. In fact, Cheong recalls that the moment when he realized that the mice tumors were being eradicated as a high point of his research. He hopes his work will have a positive impact in the treatment and diagnosis of cancer.
Cheong, 33, arrived in the U.S. in September 2001 to begin his studies. He received his Ph.D. in cell and molecular medicine from Johns Hopkins in 2006. Currently, he is working on postdoctoral research at JHU, and he hopes to remain in academia while focusing on research that industry would normally classify as high risk ideas. He says, "These are the ideas that need to be explored because they have the potential to completely change how we treat cancer." He is married to Dawn Kua, who runs a nonprofit organization in Singapore.
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Ian Cheong
Luminescent Quantum Dots for Ultrasensitive Biological Detection
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Warren C.W. Chan
MagMOONs - Magnetically MOdulated Optical Nanoprobes
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Jeffrey Anker
Mechanical Leech
The Mechanical Leech is a medical device that will replace biological leeches in post-surgical treatment of tissue reattachment patients; alleviating venous congestion. The device will greatly improve controllability, patient appeal, and convenience while lessening the costs associated with live leeches.
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Scott Ho
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Jessica Kuhlman
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