Since 1999, MIT's Technology Review has selected 35 exceptionally talented young innovators whose work a distinguished panel of judges have agreed has the greatest potential to transform the world.
The list has become an important recognition among technologists at startups, in industry, and in the academy. Over the years, TR has had some success in choosing women and men whose innovations and companies have been profoundly influential on the direction of human affairs. Previous winners include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the cofounders of Google; Mark Zuckerberg, the cofounder of Facebook; Jonathan Ive, the chief designer of Apple; Helen Greiner, the cofounder of iRobot; Max Levchin, the cofounder of PayPal and founder of Slide; David Karp, the creator of Tumblr; and MIT neuroscientist Ed Boyden, one of the inventors of the emerging field of optogenetics, which makes it possible to control thought and memory.
But why restrict nominees to technologists under the age of 35? What's with the youth chauvinism? Don't you think people 35 or older have the capacity to be truly innovative? After all the history of technology is replete with examples of world-historical innovations by people in middle, late-middle, or even old age. Of Thomas Edison's 1,093 U.S. patents, only about 300 were filed before he was 35 years old. Steve Jobs was 52 in 2007, when he first unveiled the iPhone.
According to TR editors, the reasoning behind the age qualification is mainly journalistic. The list of innovators is not primarily a list of the most innovative people in the world, because such a list would inevitably be composed of men and women well known to our audience. Rather it is a list of young people, because TR hopes to introduce us to personalities of you may have never heard but who will in the years to come set the world on fire with their potential to transform the world.
Some members of the latest list of young innovators from around the world have developed consumer Web services you might have used, such as Spotify or Dropbox. Others are making more fundamental breakthroughs that have yet to be commercialized, such as more efficient engines or improvements in optical communications. And a few are blazing trails in fields that didn’t exist before, like pop-up fabrication of tiny machines, or cameras that can see around corners. But all 35 of them have something significant in common: their work is likely to be influential for a very long time. Of the 35, 5 are Indians!
In this new list for 2012, a few worth special mentions:
Ryan Bailey
Shining a light on faster, cheaper, more accurate medical tests
Sarbajit Banerjee
Windows that block heat—but let it through when you want them to
Burcin Becerik-Gerber
Using cell phones to negotiate energy-efficient settings in office buildings
Qixin Chen
Improving demand forecasting for electric power to save fuel and reduce emissions
William Chueh
Pulling hydrogen out of water with the help of concentrated sunlight and an inexpensive material
Mircea Dincă
Using sponges to improve and store alternative fuels
Daniel Ek
Making online music a paying business, without forcing people to pony up for one song at a time
Rana el Kaliouby
Teaching devices to tell a frown from a smile
Ken Endo
Adding spring to robotic limbs by doing away with some of the motors
Christina Fan
Prenatal testing for genetic conditions from a sample of the mother’s blood
Abraham Flaxman
Combining different types of data in new ways in order to track and slow the spread of disease in developing countries
Danielle Fong
Making clean energy pay off by storing it as squeezed air
Saikat Guha
Letting advertisers send targeted pitches to your mobile phone without ever seeing your personal information
Chris Harrison
Liberating us from the touch screen by turning skin and objects into input devices
John Hering
Securing our smartphones from spyware and rogue apps, with a little help from the crowds
Drew Houston
Hiding all the complexities of remote file storage behind a small blue box
Prashant Jain
Tuning nanocrystals to make tinier, more efficient switches for optical computing and solar panels
Bryan Laulicht
Finding an adhesive that protects vulnerable skin
Nanshu Lu
Soft, flexible electronics bond to skin and even organs for better health monitoring
Shishir Mehrotra
Turning a Web video phenomenon into a profitable business by making ads optional
Shannon Miller
Making engines super-efficient by getting them to run at extremely high pressures
Ren Ng 
By tracking the direction of light, a camera takes pictures that can be refocused on different objects in a scene
Juan Sebastián Osorio
Monitors specially designed for premature infants help detect breathing problems
Joyce Poon
A tiny roller coaster for light could help keep data centers cool
Hossein Rahnama
Mobile apps that tell you what you need to know before you have to ask
Ben Silbermann
A smartly designed social network for sharing images and interests
Christopher Soghoian
On a tear against bad privacy practices online, he urges companies to change the way they operate—and sounds alarms if they don’t.
Pratheev Sreetharan
Mass-producible tiny machines snap into place like objects in a pop-up book
Leila Takayama
Applying the tools of social science to make robots easier to live and work with
Bozhi Tian
Artificial tissue that can monitor and improve health down to the level of individual cells
Eben Upton
His ultracheap computer is perfect for tinkering
Andreas Velten
Spotting tiny problems with help from an ultrafast camera
Zheng Wang
Slowing light to help chips cope with optical data
Baile Zhang
A new type of invisibility cloak made from a common material can work with larger objects
Weian Zhao
Spying on cells in their native habitat to develop better tests and drugs
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