Mariangela Lisanti, a laureate in the making

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Nov. 10, 2004 – She won what’s dubbed the Junior Nobel Prize before she could vote. She attended the Nobel ceremonies and gala ball before she was of age. She could have graduated from Harvard University early, but instead decided to follow the traditional four-year program and depart with the Class of 2005.

Mariangela Lisanti, whose profile appeared in the Small Times January/February issue in 2002, remains on track to become a prominent name in the scientific community. If the Intel Science Talent Search Award is any indicator, she has a reasonable shot at taking a real Nobel at some point in her career.

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In 2001, she won the Intel award while a senior in high school for a project measuring conductance in gold nanowires. Originally launched in 1942 under the sponsorship of Westinghouse, the award has an impressive record. Five of its recipients went on to become Nobel laureates, a pattern that earned it the “Junior Nobel” moniker.

Lisanti also earned a Siemens Westinghouse Science and Technology scholarship for $100,000, the same amount she garnered for the Intel prize. Through Intel, she received an invitation to attend the Nobel award ceremonies in Stockholm as a member of a global student group.

She spent 10 days talking with dignitaries, swapping ideas with young scientists from around the world and learning etiquette and the steps to the fox trot.

“Everything was so cool,” she said, speaking from her home in Connecticut. But the chance to interact with what could well be her generation’s Nobel laureates stands out the most.

“That’s the part that had the most impact,” she said, “having the opportunity to meet these amazing majorly intelligent people. I was inspired.”

After her freshman year, Lisanti worked one more summer in the nanoelectronics lab of Mark Reed, an electrical engineering and applied physics professor at Yale University. Reed had served as her mentor when she was in high school and remains a trusted adviser.

A physics major, she has spent the last two years working in labs at Harvard, writing and editing a campus science magazine and helping to run a group for women in science.

Eventually she expects to be reunited with her friends from the Nobel experience. Meeting in Stockholm would be fine, maybe as seasoned scientists with notable discoveries. “That would be so much fun to see them with the prize sometime,” she said.

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