For three graduate students, who have sometimes let their own work languish while volunteering as coaches of a championship science team – this principle is vivid. Next year, all three will be moving on to post-doctoral or professor positions.

Over the past four years Ingrid Swanson Pultz, Justin Siegel and Rob Egbert have worked hundreds of hours with more than 50 students, who competed in November to win the championship in , a competition in synthetic biology that involves genetic engineering of microbes.

“I love working with them,” Pultz said. “When my thesis isnt working, I just walk over to the lab and see their enthusiasm and I feel better.” She first created a much smaller team that competed in 2008, and talked Siegel and Egbert into joining her among the five advisers. Siegel has received his doctorate in biomolecular structure and design and has applied directly for faculty positions at several universities. Pultz expects to complete hers in microbiology by June. Egbert will finish his in electrical engineering in the summer.

“After 2008, I swore I would never do it again,” she recalled. Funny how she forgot to quit.

Our reporter and photographer saw some of the team in a laboratory in the Health Sciences annex, where the chaotic symphony of their discussion illustrated a special camaraderie. The scrum of people could barely fit between the lab benches, where a silver-taped cabinet door became an impromptu desk. The undergrads hummed and bubbled with questions, teasing and discussion.

In the lab were: Sydney Gordon, Liz Stanley and Austin Moon, all seniors; Sean Wu and Lei Zheng, sophomores; and junior Matthew Harger. The whole team can be seen at their .

In the hours and hours of work in the laboratory over the summer, Harger said he felt as if everyone was equal. He could ask a question or bounce an idea off his advisers, just as if they were peers. Gordon says doing real science with applications that could help people was a contrast to “moving termites around” in a class-based lab project.

“I can’t imagine my life without science and research now,” Gordon said, “and it’s all due to the three wonderful advisers.”

During summer, Pultz and Siegel watched the team working 12-hour days, combing the scientific literature to try to find an enzyme that would help them in their quest to engineer a microbe to produce diesel fuel, and a novel enzyme to help digest gluten. Another subset of students was supervised by Egbert and worked on a project about getting bacterial cells to grow nanomagnets, this was called the magnetosome project.

“They are amazing,” Pultz said of the team, which included students majoring in many different subjects and some with no science experience. When interviewed after their win, team members expressed shock. But Pultz thinks they are too humble. She believed they were something special months before their big win.

Siegel, who learned a lot about proteins from his own , said being an adviser to this team has been “one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.” He skipped the regional competition in September, where the 91̽��team won the “Americas” trophy, because his own first child – Josefina Amara- was born just a few days earlier. But Siegel made it to the Boston competition and brought his own father, Brock Siegel, along.

For his part, Egbert explains he feels lucky to be a mentor, because it is so satisfying to see students understand and “become independent.” Alicia Wong, who graduated with a degree in materials science in June, said she found the summers iGEM work with Egbert highly rewarding, especially getting to know others in the lab environment and hearing about their research.

People who study the science of education may puzzle just a bit about this teams success. There doesnt seem to be much incentive – in terms of grades or money.  But the mentoring chemistry spells l-e-a-r-n-i-n-g.

MacArthurs for Shwetak Patel

Shwetak Patel, assistant professor of computer science and engineering and electrical engineering has been named one of this years MacArthur Fellows.

Patel, who explores how people and computers interact, is one of 22 people honored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.  The $500,000 no-strings-attached prizes are often referred to as the “genius” awards.

“It feels like winning an intellectual lottery,” Patel said during a phone interview from China, where he was traveling when the award was announced.  Patel said he literally collapsed to “the floor” when he received his early-morning call from the foundation about a week ago in his Seattle home.

Patel’s most recent research has been in building a new class of low-cost and easy-to-deploy sensing systems for the home, called Infrastructure Mediated Sensing, which leverages existing utility infrastructures in a home to support whole-house sensing.  To allow residents to track their energy usage down to the level of individual appliances and fixtures, Patel’s distinctive approach leverages existing infrastructure — such as gas lines, electrical wiring, plumbing, and ventilation ducts — and requires only a minimal number of small, wirelessly connected sensors attached to the central hookup of each of these utility sources. When coupled with a machine learning algorithm that analyzes patterns of activity and the signature noise produced by each appliance, the sensors enable users to measure and disaggregate their energy and water consumption and to detect inefficiencies more effectively.

“Shwetak is an inspirational teacher.  As an innovator he understands the needs of the consumer and designs products that are simple but powerful devices for the home.   Im excited to see what hell do with this award,” said Matt O’Donnell, dean of the UW’s College of Engineering.

In addition to the resource conservation applications of his sensor systems, Patel is also exploring their potential for home security or elder care, as they serve the related function of sensing human activity and monitoring movement throughout a building’s rooms. While envisioning cutting-edge new tools to address pressing social challenges and to make the buildings we live in more responsive to our needs, Patel devises elegant, simple solutions that dramatically reduce the cost of implementation.

The 29-year-old has won multiple honors in the past few years including the New York Times top technology of the year, MITs Technology Review TR-35 award for innovators under the age of 35 and was recently named a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow.  Patel was also a founder of Zensi, Inc., a demand side energy monitoring solutions provider, which was acquired by Belkin, Inc. in 2010. He earned a bachelors degree in 2003 and a doctorate in 2008 from the Georgia Institute of Technology before coming to the 91̽��in 2008.

The MacArthur grants are given each year to United States residents of any age and in any field who show “exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future.”  MacArthur Fellowships come without stipulations or reporting requirements and offer Fellows unprecedented freedom and opportunity to reflect, create, and explore.

Patel showed humor when discussing the award. He will face a class full of students next week in his “Embedded Devices” course, and he expects “genius” jokes.  “My wife is already making those,” he explained. His wife, Julie Kientz, is an assistant professor in the department of Human Centered Design & Engineering and The Information School, and an adjunct professor in Computer Science and Engineering.