Materials chemistry graduate student Amir Nasajpour (P. Weiss group) has been selected as one of the finalists to compete in the 2023 Collegiate Inventors Competition in Washington, D.C. next month.
Nasajpour is one of ten finalists who will present their invention to a panel of judges from the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Oct. 24-25 to win $10,000.
Additionally, the public can vote for a team to receive the Arrow Electronics People’s Choice Award, which includes a $2,000 prize and receive patent acceleration. If you would like to vote for Nasajpour to win the award, click here. Voting will close Oct. 24 at 3 p.m. EST.
Nasajpour’s entry is a startup company, Entropic Biosciences, Inc., that he co-founded with his advisor, Professor Paul Weiss. Their research involves assembling cells into functional tissue, which addresses the grand challenge in biomedical engineering and healthcare of establishing tools for recreating functional human tissues and organs. The company has developed a bio-inspired rapid sample preparation kit that enables high-throughput culturing of multiple cell types and rapid self-assembly into 3D self-standing tissue. This technology can create an array of tissue types from numerous cell sources. It enables the development of functional tissue and cancer models faster than current technologies, accelerating life science research and drug screening and working toward individualized treatments for cancer patients.
Founded in 1990, the Collegiate Inventors Competition is a national competition recognizing and rewarding innovations, discoveries, and research by college and university students and their faculty advisers.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
