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Berkeley Student Innovator Award Winner

Jessica Wang.
Congratulations, Jessica Wang!

Congratulations to second-year optometry student, Jessica Wang, for winning the Student Innovator Award – a $5,000 scholarship that rewards the most creative, innovative, and feasible idea proposed by a student, or a team of up to three students. This is the 7th year that we held this competition.

Jessica’s presentation, “Pectin-Chitosan Bioplastics: A better way to visualize contact lens packaging,” focused on the use of biodegradable materials that are abundantly available and a renewable resource; pectin from citrus peel and chitosan from prawn shells.

“It was an absolute pleasure to be able to present my idea to the judges and learn about how much they care about sustainability. We have developed such a disposable lifestyle with everything being one-time-use. It has served us well and brought great convenience, but it would be ignorant of us to not seek ways to reduce waste. It’s never too late to start and I hope to see great developments in this area!” – Jessica Wang.

Thank you to our judges: Professors Roorda, Cuadros and Wildsoet, as wella as Ron Kemper and Zach Poll from VSP. Thank you VSP and Jobson’s Rick Bay Foundation for Excellence in Eyecare Education for sponsoring this award. And thanks to all the participants and to our two runners up, Samantha Chen and Matthew Low.

To read a PDF of Jessica’s abstract, click the button below.

Pectin-Chitosan Bioplastics