What were you doing when you were 17-year old ? Sara Volz, A Colorado, USA, teen created a biofuel lab in her bedroom. Even better, she developed more efficient algae that produce higher oil content just by selecting them artificially.
This is seen as an important boost to algae based biofuels. It was done with common herbicides instead of tweaking the genome. The project was so impressive that Intel awarded her the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search.
With the $100,000 (76,000 euros) prize, Sara Volz will be able to go to the Massachussets Institute of Technology. I just wonder what she will do next but I guess she could well win one day the Nobel Prize…