MIT Student Wins Prestigious Award for Flying Car Concept

Carl Dietrich sees life’s irritations not as realities to tolerate, but as sources of inspiration. The 28-year-old winner of this year’s $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize has recently found inspiration in America’s congested highways and major airports.

The Ph.D. candidate in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Aeronautics and Astronautics program received the prestigious award for a portfolio of novel inventions, including a new Personal Air Vehicle; a desktop-sized fusion reactor; and a lower-cost rocket engine.

“Carl joins a long line of independent inventors who are passionate about finding innovative ways to address society’s fundamental problems,” said Merton Flemings, director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, which sponsors the award. “He is not afraid to tackle the challenges many inventors before him have abandoned. Carl’s ability to look at big problems in creative ways and come up with practical solutions makes him just the type of person we look to honor with the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize.”