Innovators are changing our world as we know it. Their inventions open up a new area for others and achieves an innovation that lasts for decades.
Historic innovations contributed to human evolution in significant ways. They changed how we move, what we do and how fast we accomplish what we set out to do.
In recent times, young innovators are also contributing enormously to solve global issues to make our lives better.
The innovators listed below illustrate the most important emerging technologies of the moment. In biomedicine, for example, several people are figuring out in detail how the brain works and how we might stave off mental disorders.
Others are unearthing knowledge about cancer that might open new avenues for treatment. Meanwhile, as robotics and artificial intelligence make astonishing progress, innovators in those fields are showcased here. So are people who are cleverly taking advantage of the falling cost of sensors and bandwidth.
This is MIT Technology Review’s 35 under 35. They are young leaders developing new technologies to solve the major global challenges of today in remarkably different ways. Read their complete profiles here.
1/ Polina Anikeeva, 32
A creative scientist sees new ways to record and stimulate brain activity.
2/ Lars Blackmore, 34
Would space travel flourish if we could reuse the rockets?
3/ Yevgen Borodin, 34
A software tool conceived for blind people could offer an intuitive way for anyone to listen to online material.
4/ Yunji Chen, 32
Improvements in artificial intelligence call out for new hardware.
5/ Adam Coates, 33
Artificial intelligence could make the Internet more useful to the millions of people coming online for the first time.
6/ Patrick Collison, 26
He and his brother started Stripe to make money flow easily online.
7/ Canan Dagdeviren, 30
A master of flexible sensors and batteries sees opportunities for a new class of medical devices.
8/ Lisa Seacat DeLuca, 32
A software engineer makes a habit of going after everyday problems.
9/ Travis Deyle, 32
He has built robots that can be powered wirelessly and ones that can bring people medication. Now Google has him trying to use technology to improve health care.
10/ Gozde Durmus, 30
It’s amazing what you can learn about a cell when you levitate it.
11/ Zakir Durumeric, 26
A computer scientist sees a way to improve online security.
12/ Gilad Evrony, 33
Single-neuron genome sequencing is revealing clues about what goes wrong in the brain.
13/ Jeannette Garcia, 33
A chance discovery sparked a quest for plastics that are both strong and recyclable.
14/ Jun Ge, 32
Why we might use tiny flowers, trees, and spindles to create the pharmaceuticals of the future.
15/ Zhen Gu, 34
Diabetics are tired of sticking themselves with needles. Someday they may not have to.
16/ Cigall Kadoch, 30
A major vulnerability of certain kinds of cancer is becoming clear.
17/ Duygu Kayaman, 26
What her parents did for her, she hopes to do for many other blind people.
18/ Jini Kim, 34
A stint helping the government altered her view of her health-care business.
19/ Richard Lunt, 33
Making invisible solar cells for electronic devices requires some exceptional creativity.
20/ Dena Marrinucci, 33
Her startup bets it can track cancer from an early stage, without any biopsies.
21/ Elizabeth Mormino, 33
A telltale protein seen in people’s brains before they have Alzheimer’s could offer a clue about possible treatments.
22/ Rikky Muller, 34
Hardware that buzzes the brain at the right moments could help treat debilitating mental disorders.
23/ Michelle O’Malley, 33
Understanding a tricky kind of single-cell creature could help reduce the cost of biofuels.
24/ Rahul Panicker, 34
This engineer from India returned home after graduate school with a new approach to helping premature babies.
25/ Rohan Paul, 30
To create an affordable obstacle detection system for blind people, he began by simply asking them what they needed.
26/ Aaswath Raman, 30
Your next air-conditioning system might save energy by beaming heat into outer space.
27/ Ben Rubin, 27
The cofounder of a live-streaming video app explains what makes it tick.
28/ Jamie Shotton, 34
He gives computers new ways to see the world.
29/ Saurabh Srivastava, 30
Voice and gestural interfaces could make digital technologies available to the world’s poorest people.
30/ Rebecca Steorts, 32
Big data could cut through the fog of war.
31/ Ilya Sutskever, 29
Why one form of machine learning will be particularly powerful.
32/ Kevin Systrom, 31
Instagram’s cofounder maintains his sharp focus.
33/ Benjamin Tee, 33
A synthetic sense of touch could help both people and machines.
34/ Conor Walsh, 33
This robotics researcher might have something in just your size.
35/ Melonee Wise, 33
Affordable robots for the warehouse and beyond.
