A look at the Class of 2017
From left: Incoming MIT freshmen Rachel Katz, Dominiquo Santistevan, Nicole O'Brien, Aashish Tripathee, Sara Volz and Efetobore Tasker Photo: Bryce Vickmark While most students were taking down posters and packing up comforters in preparation for their trip to college, Sara Volz was dismantling something slightly more intricate: a laboratory of bubbling flasks and beakers that she had carefully amassed over the last four years in the space under her loft bed. Volz has meticulously grown algae in her homemade laboratory, even adapting her sleep patterns to the algae’s light cycle. Why such watchful dedication? As the 17-year-old explains, the cultures of green slime under her bed, if grown just right, may be a promising and nonpolluting source of biofuel. The teen scientist, who hails from Colorado Springs, Colo., first became interested in biofuels seven years ago, when she learned that her neighbors were powering their car with vegetable oil....