Friday, February 29, 2008

Our Presentation and The Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize



Last Thursday our InvenTeam packed up early and left school for Troy, NY to check out the Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize Ceremony. We got to watch Dorothy Lemelson, chair of the Lemelson Foundation, and Alan Cramb, dean of the School of Engineering, award Martin Schubert the $30,000 Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize for his work in creating the first ever polarized LED. Not only did we get to hear about all of the really cool inventions all four finalists made but we also met various engineering professional attending the ceremony. We even got to meet Mrs. Lemelson herself and thank her for the awesome oppertunity her and her late husband made available to us.


After the ceremony we made our way to one of the presentation classrooms at the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies where we presented our progress so far and the overall Garden Consultant concept to some of the highest ranking engineering professionals in the world. We were joined by Merton Flemings (Lemelson-MIT Faculty Director), Phil Weilerstein (Executive Director of the NCIIA), Burt Swersey (RPI Professor), Lester Rubenfeld (Director for the Center for Initiatives in Pre-College Education at RPI), Brian Schulkin (Winner of the 2007 Lemelson-RPI Student Prize), and of course, Leigh Estabrooks (InvenTeams Grant Officer) .

We had a great time presenting the work we had done and our plans for the Garden Consultant and getting real input from such high ranking and intelligent members of the engineering community. Just being at RPI was an awesome experience. The electricity that could be felt throughout campus is amazing and I know I personally could not be more excited for college next year.

In the very near future we will be posting the presentation we gave at RPI online in video form. We also have received permission to re-post our videos online so soon all of our presentation and informational videos will be online for all to see.

Thanks so much RPI for having us for the ceremony and our presentation and thanks all who attended and everyone from the Lemelson Foundation for their support of our InvenTeam and the InvenTeam Grant Program.

Thanks -

Elliott Poppel

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