BANGOR, Maine — For a scientist, there is no greater honor than being awarded a Nobel Prize. On Monday, a pair of promising Maine scientists fresh out of high school met one of the people who knows what it takes to win the prestigious honor.
Dr. Sten Lindahl is chair emeritus of the Nobel Assembly in Medicine in Sweden. In his 16 years on that panel, he was part of a team that vetted scientific findings from around the globe to determine who would take home the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He served as chairman of the group in 2009.
Lindahl, who is in Maine for a speaking engagement, sat down with Paige Brown and Demetri Maxim, who, though still in their teens, already have some impressive scientific accomplishments under their belts.
“It’s fabulous, at that age, to be so mature and so deep into these defined projects,” Lindahl said after chatting with the students about their scientific endeavors for a few minutes.
Brown graduated from Bangor High School earlier this month. In March, she won the Intel Science Talent Search, a national competition recognizing the brightest young minds in science.
After studying Bangor’s impaired streams, she developed a system to remove phosphates from polluted water, preventing algal bloom growth. Those blooms block sunlight and prevent other aquatic plants from growing, which harms other life in the stream, including fish.
“Ultimately, I’d like to be making something that could change the world,” Brown said.
Development of a cheap method of removing pollutants from the water could be that vehicle.
Brown’s project also earned her the Maine Stockholm Junior Water Prize last year.
In addition to those honors, Brown is scheduled to receive the key to the city during a Bangor City Council meeting Monday night.
Maxim is a recent graduate of Gould Academy in Bethel. Through his research, he aims to one day “grow” a human kidney, using a patient’s stem cells to build the organ around a 3-D-printed scaffold. The implications could be huge and eliminate the need for patients to sit on a transplant waitlist for extended periods of time.
He told the story of his scientific endeavor during a TED Talk last year. His family, including his mother, has a history of genetic kidney problems, spurring his interest in this field of research.
“Someday I might need a kidney of my own anyway,” Maxim said with a laugh.
Both Brown and Maxim will be attending the same university next year — Stanford. Brown plans to study chemical engineering, and Maxim plans to study biology.
Lindahl said the students’ projects were exceptionally advanced. Asked if he thought Brown or Maxim would be in the running for a Nobel Prize one day, Lindahl said, “If they continue to grow and focus on research more than startup companies or patents, I think they have a chance.”
Lindahl, an anesthesiologist by trade, is professor emeritus of physiology and pharmacology at Karolinska Institutet. He is scheduled to speak at 6 p.m. Monday at the University of Maine’s Minsky Recital Hall. His visit was organized by the Anesthesia Professional Services Department of Eastern Maine Medical Center.
Lindahl said he planned to tell the UMaine audience about Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist and engineer who invented dynamite, and the origins of the Nobel Prize, which Nobel’s fortune would finance.
Lindahl will talk about what it takes to win a Nobel Prize. He’ll talk about how much Nobel Prize-winning science has changed over the years — and how much it hasn’t.
For example, one of the first Nobel Prizes awarded in medicine was awarded in 1902, recognizing the discovery of the parasite that causes malaria. Last year, more than a century later, Youyou Tu received the same prize for her discovery of a drug that improves survivability rates among malaria patients.
Brown and Maxim plan on attending that session as well.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.