35 Innovators Under 35 2017
MIT Technology Review, as a rule, focuses on the technology first—the breakthrough, the surprise, the accidental discovery with the potential to upend the way we live. Our annual look at 35 outstanding innovators under 35 is a reminder that behind all those innovations are people with dreams, fears, and ambitions. Sometimes they hack away at a problem for years before figuring out a way forward. Sometimes they stumble on a solution they didn’t know they were searching for. We hope these portraits offer a sense of the variety of work being done in technology, and a sense of what’s coming next.
Judges
Zhenan Bao, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University; Burcin Becerik-Gerber, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Southern California; David Berry, General Partner, Flagship Pioneering; Joseph Bolen, Chief Scientific Officer, PureTech Health; Edward Boyden, Co-director, MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering; Yet-Ming Chiang, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, MIT; James Collins, Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science, MIT; John Dabiri, Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University; Jonathan Downey, Founder, Airware; David Fattal, Founder and CEO, Leia; Tanuja Ganu, Cofounder, DataGlen; Javier García-Martínez, Director, Molecular Nanotechnology Laboratory, University of Alicante, Spain; Julia R. Greer, Professor of Materials Science, Mechanics, and Medical Engineering, Caltech; Christine P. Hendon, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University; Eric Horvitz, Director, Microsoft Research Labs; Quoc Le, Research Scientist, Google; Jennifer Lewis, Wyss Professor of Biomaterials Engineering, Harvard University; Hao Li, CEO, Pinscreen; Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Southern California; Mick Mountz, Founder and CEO, Kiva Systems; Carmichael Roberts, Entrepreneur and General Partner, North Bridge Venture Partners; John Rogers, Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science & Engineering, University of Illinois; Umar Saif, Vice Chancellor, ITU Punjab, Pakistan; Rachel Sheinbein, Managing Director, Makeda Capital; Mark Surman, Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation; Kay Tye, Assistant Professor, Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, MIT; Cyrus Wadia, Vice President, Sustainable Business and Innovation, Nike; Jennifer West, Professor of Engineering, Duke University; Jackie Yi-Ru Ying, Executive Director, Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Singapore; Feng Zhang, Core Institute Member, Broad Institute, MIT and Harvard; Ben Zhao, Neubauer Professor of Computer Science, University of Chicago