AE graduate student Adam Steele is among eight finalists campus wide for the $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize. The award is an extension of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize that has recognized outstanding student inventors at MIT since 1995.
Written by Written by Susan Mumm
AE graduate student Adam Steele
AE graduate student Adam Steele.
AE graduate student Adam Steele is among eight finalists campus wide for the $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize. The award is an extension of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize that has recognized outstanding student inventors at MIT since 1995.
A distinguished panel of scientists, technologists, engineers, and entrepreneurs will interview all finalists in the coming weeks, and will choose a winner in mid-February. The winner will be awarded the prize at a ceremony scheduled for 3:00 p.m., March 4, 2009, in the auditorium of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. The awards ceremony is open to the public, and will be immediately followed by a brief reception for all attendees.
AE Prof. Eric Loth and Dr. Ilker Bayer, a postdoctoral research associate, advise Steele, who has created a biomimetic nanocomposite paint that exhibits extremely low friction to liquids, making it self-cleaning and non-wetting. This paint is both environmentally friendly and incredibly tough, enabling it to be used in a variety of applications. Steele is also developing products to assist visually-impaired individuals in the avoidance of eye level collisions and in extending their current outdoor navigation technology to large indoor spaces. Lastly, with a team of programmers and web designers, he is creating a social music website aimed at harnessing the creative power of individuals around the world.
Steele earned his bachelor's in aerospace engineering from Penn State University, and his master's in AE at Illinois in 2008.