Young Da Vinci" wins Lemelson-MIT prize for invention

BOSTON: A 27-year-old MIT graduate student on Thursday won the prestigious

Lemelson prize for invention with ideas such as making cheap computer memory

chips from a plastic potato chip bag. Brian Hubert, a native of Yakima, Wash.,

won the $30,000 student cash prize for a diverse group of designs and

inventions, including a nano-assembly machine that conceivably could build a

gene chip the size of a nanometer, or one-billionth of a meter.

He envisions the nano-assembler - picking up thousands of atoms at a time -

constructing a gene chip that could analyze a patient's blood and hunt for

disease before symptoms show. The student award is named after the late Jerome

Lemelson, one of America's most prolific inventors. Lemelson's more than 500

patents touch on everything from bar code readers and cordless phones to

camcorders and baby dolls that cry.

In 1994, Lemelson and his wife, Dorothy, established the Lemelson-MIT program

to recognize US inventors and to encourage more young people to become

engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs. The program also includes a national

award of $500,000, one of the world's largest awards for invention. This year's

winner will be announced in April.

"This is an institution that eats, breathes and warms its heart to

innovation every day," said Thomas Magnanti, dean of engineering for the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hubert said he scribbles down his ideas

in the middle of the night and never goes to bed without a pen and notebook by

his nightstand. As a 14-year-old, his first invention was a "Cheater

Meter," a pocket-sized device that would alert customers if they were being

cheated when pumping gas at a service station. "I came up with the idea

after reading a newspaper story about how people weren't getting the gas they

paid for," Hubert said.

Besides his numerous inventions, Hubert also is a composer and a concert

pianist who developed software to pinpoint investment opportunities in the stock

market. Hubert plans to complete his doctorate in mechanical engineering with an

emphasis in nano-assembly. "I think we may have a young Da Vinci

here," said Robert Lemelson, son of the late inventor, who died in 1997.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.