16 Incredibly Impressive Students At Princeton

Founded in 1746, Princeton University remains a vibrant community of scholarship and learning.

Students who attend this Ivy League school follow in the footsteps of Woodrow Wilson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eric Schmidt, Meg Whitman, Michelle Obama, Jeff Bezos, and other movers and shakers of industry.

From creating companies to scaling summits, these 16 students are changing what it means to be impressive.

Alison Bick invented a smartphone app that tests for clean water.

Class of 2015

By 2050, at least one in four people is likely to live in a country affected by chronic shortages of fresh water, according to the United Nations. The situation is more dire than ever, and Alison Bick may have the solution in the palm of her hands.

Bick, an Intel Science Talent Search finalist in 2011, holds the patent for a smartphone app that tests water for contamination — a fast, simple, low-cost, and real-time device suitable for use throughout the world. Here’s how it works: The user takes a picture of water that has been exposed to fluorescent light (most commercially available cell phones can be programmed to emit the right spectrum of light from their display). Bick’s app analyzes the picture and determines the water’s organic and inorganic qualities, with a confidence level of 65% and 80%, respectively.

The Short Hills, New Jersey, teen first got the idea when a storm hit her town and the water being pumped into homes was potentially contaminated. Since development began, she independently patented the device and has been in talks with Veolia — a French water treatment firm — and the World Bank to commercialize and implement the invention.

Bick, a chemical and biological engineering major, plans to earn a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and split her time between academic and commercial research. 

Cason Crane is the first openly gay person to climb the Seven Summits.

Class of 2017

In the two years Cason Crane took between graduating from high school and starting at Princeton, he scaled the highest mountain on every continent (the Seven Summits), becoming the fifth-youngest person as well as the first openly gay person to do so. He used the opportunity to raise awareness of issues faced by LGBT athletes; he also raised more than $ 135,000 for The Trevor Project, a suicide lifeline for LGBTQ youth.

Since arriving at Princeton last fall, Crane has continued his work for The Trevor Project through the initiative he started called The Rainbow Summits Project, as well as talks around the world, including two TEDx Talks.

Another of Crane’s passions is entrepreneurship — he served as the chief of staff for this year’s Start @ a Startup at Princeton, a conference that brought together 250 undergraduate entrepreneurs from around the country and 30 prominent tech startups, like Dropbox, Square, and Indiegogo. Crane is responsible for managing the $ 300,000 budget for the event.

When he’s not in class or training for Ironman triathlons, Crane is thinking about his future — either in media and communications, or in the tech world, possibly building out an idea he has for a travel-related startup.

Catherine Dennig is launching her nightlife app overseas.

Class of 2015

The summer of her sophomore year, Catherine Dennig created the nightlife app nofomo, designing and building everything from the business plan to the sales pitch to the app itself. She hired a small team, which is helping her ready the app for beta launch in Auckland, New Zealand, in the next few weeks.

The impending beta launch puts a lot on Dennig’s already-full plate, which is already heaped with her senior thesis as well as responsibilities as co-president of the Princeton Social Entrepreneurship Initiative (PSEI) and undergraduate adviser on the Princeton Entrepreneurship Advisory Committee (PEAC).

Through PSEI, Dennig has been expanding the group’s mission to make Princeton one of the world’s top social innovation hubs. She put the focus on PSEI’s 60-second Princeton Pitch contest, doubling the number of pitches as well as the prize money awarded; an iOS app that lists all of Princeton’s current entrepreneurship resources; and stronger ties to the alumni community.

Dennig was one of two undergraduate advisers chosen from a pool of more than 5,200 to serve on the PEAC. She works with faculty, staff, alumni, and graduate student advisers to help the university president implement administrative policy changes in teaching and enabling entrepreneurship on campus.

When she graduates in the spring, Dennig knows she wants to remain involved in the startup world, starting with giving nofomo her undivided attention.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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16 Incredibly Impressive Students At Princeton