ATHENS - Mike Cash says he loves a challenge. So when he stumbled on an advertisement that led him to a Web site offering chemistry problems to solve, he jumped at the chance. <br>
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His quick work paid off: Cash, a University of Georgia chemistry graduate student, teamed with his professor and won a $30,000 prize. And industrial science may benefit, too. <br>
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It took Cash and Robert Phillips only a matter of days to solve the problem -- creating a synthetic tryptophan compound, or amino acid. <br>
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Cash told the Athens Banner-Herald, ``We had to work fast because there's a deadline. I was like, `Why not just go for it?' I enjoy a challenge.'' <br>
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The Web site, Innocentive.com, run by drug giant Eli Lilly and Company, posts scientific challenges and invites scientists around the world to solve them for cash prizes. <br>
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Half of the $30,000 prize for Cash and Phillips will go to the university because the work was done in a campus lab. But the pair say profit was not their top motive. <br>
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Private companies around the world offer chemistry and biology problems to Innocentive.com. Phillips said the idea is that companies can save money by outsourcing their problems. <br>
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Neither he nor Cash were given an idea how much the companies could earn down the road with their breakthrough or what the applications might be for their new synthetic compound. <br>
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Phillips said he will spend his portion of the cash on a new outboard motor for his boat. Cash's cash will go to a new electric guitar and to pay off credit-card debt.
