Genius Teen Wins $150,000 For Inventing Device That Cleans Polluted Water at Intel Science Talent Search

April 7, 2016

A 17-year-old female student from Maine has developed an ingenious way to filter pollutants from contaminated bodies of water and the invention earned her $150,000 in prize money from Intel.

Paige Brown, a senior from Bangor High School, has successfully crafted an effective way to pull destructive phosphorus from a stream by using a seaweed gel combined with aluminum and magnesium. With the use of some hair clips and a block of foam, she has created a filter from the globs of mixture that she herself perfected.

The biodegradable scaffold that she invented was a cheap and very effective device not only for removing phosphorus from contaminated water but also for introducing collected phosphorous into soil, making any ground fertilized.

The brilliant invention won her the Global Good Prize along with a prize of $150,000 in college tuition at this year’s Intel Science Talent Search (STS).

“It was definitely quite the experience,” Brown told Tech Insider. “I’d say it was the best week of my life.”

Polluted water has endangered billions of people’s lives in many countries where access to clean water is very scarce. Brown’s design has the potential to reach and help people around the world.

The young inventor has already been accepted to Stanford, Caltech, Harvard, MIT, Columbia, and Yale but is still undecided as to “where she fits in best.”

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