the annual Discover Awards for Technological Innovation which honor the visionary men and women who create our newest technologies. The Columbus Foundation Award recognizes an individual American who has improved or is attempting to improve the world through ingenuity and innovation and provides incentive for continuing research. In 2000, the Foundation awarded the $100,000 Columbus Foundation Award to Dr. Anthony Atala, Associate Professor of Surgery, Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, for his research on creating new organs in the laboratory. In 1997, the Foundation 357 sponsored 40 kids through the first Christopher Columbus Academy in conjunction with the Bayer/NSF Award for Community Innovation. The Foundation also awards the $25,000 Columbus Foundation Community Grant to one of the teams as seed money for their project. In 2000, the $25,000 Columbus Foundation grant went to a team from Houston, TX for their innovative approach to science education proposed by Science Squad. Science Squad is designed to address low scores on standardized tests taken by local fifth graders and help them prepare for the challenges of middle school science. In 1998, the Columbus Foundation awarded the first Young Inventors Award to the six inductees in the National Gallery for America's Young Inventors. The inductees must have been awarded in a national invention competition, hold a patent or have a product on the national
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