MIT Technology Review has released this year’s list of the top 35 innovators under 35. Many of these innovators are engineers who are using their skills and talent to work toward a better world. The list’s five categories include inventors, entrepreneurs, visionaries, humanitarians and pioneers.
Inventors
Muyinatu Bell, 32 – John Hopkins University
Creating clearer imaging to spot cancer earlier and more accurately.
Dinesh Bharadia, 28 – MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
A seemingly impossible radio design will double wireless data capabilities.
Adam Bry, 27 – Brydio
Building drones that can navigate the world and serve as airborne assistants.
Wei Gao, 31 – University of California, Berkeley
This engineer has built sweatbands that monitor your health.
Jiawei Gu, 30 – Baidu
This AI expert designs interfaces that let technology assist rather than annoy.
Alex Heygi, 29 – PARC
A new type of camera could let smartphones find counterfeit drugs or spot the ripest peach.
Kendra Kuhl, 34 – Opus 12
She developed a simple reactor to turn carbon dioxide into useful chemicals.
Desmond Loke, 33 – Singapore University of Technology and Design
Throw away your RAM and flash drive. Here’s a better type of memory.
Evan Macosko, 34 – Harvard Medical School
A breakthrough in probing how cells create complex tissues and organs.
Entrepreneurs
Heather Bowerman, 31 – Dot Laboratories
Cheap hormone tests could begin to address gender disparities in health care.
Kelly Gardner, 31 – Zephyrus Biosciences
This bioengineer figured out how to handle a key challenge facing biotech startups.
Meron Gribetz, 30 – Meta
An augmented-reality dreamer tries to turn his vision into a business.
Christine Ho, 33 – Imprint Energy
Her startup is commercialising thin, flexible, printable batteries that she developed at UC Berkeley.
Samay Kohli, 30 – GreyOrange
After greasing the wheels of India’s e-commerce boom, this executive eyes overseas expansion.
Stephanie Lampkin, 31 – Blendoor
She sees a way to make Silicon Valley’s workforce look more like the rest of society.
Ari Roisman, 32 – Glide
Why the future of communication could be on your wrist.
Visionaries
Nora Ayanian, 34 – University of Southern California
To build better machines, a roboticist goes far outside her field for guidance.
Jonathan Downey, 32 – Airware
The creator of control software for drones has foreseen the advantages of autonomous aircraft for years.
Kevin Esvelt, 34 – MIT
A scientist who is developing new gene-editing techniques also warns of their potential.
Maithilee Kunda, 32 – Vanderbilt University
People on the autism spectrum are inspiring her novel approach to creating artificial intelligence.
Evan Spiegal, 26 – Snapchat
The cofounder of Snapchat figured out that people wanted something different from social media.
Jean Yang, 29 – Carnegie Mellon University
Why don’t computers keep our personal data secure by default?
Humanitarians
Jagdish Chaturvedi, 32 – InnAccel
This doctor can laugh about the complex path he took to becoming an innovator.
Ehsan Hoque, 34 – University of Rochester
If you want to be the life of the party, practice by talking to a machine first.
Kelly Sanders, 31 – University of Southern California
A researcher in drought-ridden California tries to better account for the ways we use water.
Ronaldo Tenório, 30 – Hand Talk
A mobile app gives deaf people a sign-language interpreter they can take anywhere.
Sonia Vallabh, 32 – Broad Institute
A devastating personal diagnosis led her to become a scientist on the trail of a cure.
Pioneers
Qing Cao, 32 – IBM Research
His inventions are helping IBM in its decade-plus quest to replace silicon transistors with more efficient carbon nanotubes.
Ying Dao, 33 – University of Illinois
She knows how to print perfect plastic solar cells.
Vivian Ferry, 32 – University of Minnesota
She uses nanocrystals to trap light and increase the efficiency of solar cells.
Sergey Levine, 29 – University of California, Berkeley
He teaches robots to watch and learn from their own successes.
Oriol Vinyals, 33 – Google DeepMind
Showing computers how to learn might seem like a game, but it’s also serious business.
Aleksandra Vojvodic, 34 – University of Pennsylvania
A computation whiz speeds up the search for catalysts that will make green chemistry possible.
Yihui Zhang, 30 – Tsingshua University
Pop-up nanostructures make it far easier to fabricate very tiny shapes.
Jia Zhu, 34 – Nanjing University
What to do if there is no clean water around.
Content and images sourced from MIT Technology Review.