Several MIT faculty and alumni have been named to the TR35, Technology Review Magazine's annual compilation of the 35 top innovators worldwide under the age of 35.
Selected from more than 300 nominees by a panel of expert judges and the editorial staff of Technology Review, the TR35 is an elite group of accomplished young innovators who exemplify the spirit of innovation in business, technology and the arts.
"The quality and breadth of accomplishment of the 2007 TR35 winners is truly amazing," said Jason Pontin, editor in chief of Technology Review. "We honor them for their achievements today and into the future."
The 35 innovators will be profiled in the September-October issue of the magazine and will be honored at the 2007 Emerging Technologies Conference to be held Sept. 25-27 at MIT.
The MIT faculty on the list, which was announced today, are Ali Khademhosseini, Kristala Jones Prather and Mehmet Fatih Yanik.
Khademhosseini is an assistant professor in medicine and health sciences and technology at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and the Harvard Medical School; Prather is the Joseph R. Mares (1924) Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering; and Yanik is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Khademhosseini, 31, was selected for his work on improving engineered tissues using an approach he has likened to building with "living Legos."
"By giving cells the same interconnections they have in the body, Khademhosseini hopes to create tissues that can be used to test new drugs and, eventually, to rebuild organs," according to Technology Review.
The magazine chose Prather, 34, for her role in trying to make compounds using biological processes rather than chemical reactions--a technique that could avoid harsh solvents and toxic byproducts.
"What I'm interested in is designing organisms to be chemical factories," Prather told Technology Review.
Yanik, 29, was selected for inventing a way to stop light pulses on a chip and release them at will. The magazine said such a technology could allow engineers to route and store optical data in telecommunications networks and on microchips without having to convert it to electricity.
MIT alumni among the TR35 include David Berry, Sanjit Biswas, Khademhosseini, Ju Li, Christopher Loose, Anna Lysyanskaya, Prather, Neil Renninger and Yanik. The list also includes Javier Garcia-Martinez, a recent MIT postdoctoral fellow.
