Breakthroughs leading to sophisticated cancer, tuberculosis, and arthritis drugs, as well as cell imaging nanotechnology, get recognition.
Award winner Erez Lieberman-Aiden has developed breakthroughs in such areas as genetics, sensor technology, applied mathematics, and even evolutionary linguistics.
Bacteriophages aren't as popular as antibiotics--but that could change, thanks to researchers.
Lemelson-MIT Prize goes to chemist Timothy Swager, whose tech innovation has a nose for TNT. Photo: A nose as good as Fido's?
Leroy Hood, who co-founded the organization that mapped out the complete set of human genes, wins the Lemelson-MIT Prize for his inventions.
Swarming robots that can act in concert and mimic the behavior of bees net a 30-year-old doctoral candidate in computer science the annual Lemelson-MIT Student Prize.
Andrew Heafitz, an MIT graduate student, has been selected as the recipient of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT student prize for inventiveness. Heafitz, a 32-year-old doctoral candidate in Mechanical Engineering, invented a low-cost kerosene-liquid oxygen rocket engine with a solar-car motor booster as part of his master's thesis. The engine will likely become the basis of a rocket launched by MIT. He currently is working on an aerial surveillance camera the size of a soda can that will be tested by the Army and further developed by his start-up TacShot. The Lemelson prizes were established by Jerome Lemelson, a controversial inventor who filed several patent infringement suits in his lifetime against auto manufacturers, semiconductor makers and others.
Peripatetic inventor Raymond Kurzweil, who created the first reading machine for blind people, is awarded the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT prize.