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MIT brainpower highlighted in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 lists for 2018

Forbes calls this year's 30 Under 30 lists an "encyclopedia of creative disruption."
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At least 30 MIT faculty, research staff, and alumni are listed throughout Forbes’ seventh annual 30 Under 30 edition, featuring some of the world’s best young innovators.
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At least 30 MIT faculty, research staff, and alumni are listed throughout Forbes’ seventh annual 30 Under 30 edition, featuring some of the world’s best young innovators.

Forbes calls its 2018 30 Under 30 lists an “encyclopedia of creative disruption featuring 600 young stars in 20 different industries.” So it should come as no surprise that these lists are heavily populated by recent MIT graduates and other members of the Institute community.

Similar to past years, at least 30 MIT faculty, research staff, and alumni are listed throughout Forbes’ seventh annual edition of the world’s best young innovators. Read about the MIT community members who made this year’s list below:

Omar Abudayyeh ’12 and Jonathan Gootenberg ’13 (health care), doctoral candidates at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. “Abudayyeh and Gootenberg pioneered two advances: a new enzyme for editing genes and a new technique for editing RNA.”

David Bierman SM ’14, PhD ’17 (energy), founder of Marigold Power, Inc. “At MIT he helped to develop a thermophotovoltaic converter that absorbs sunlight and converts it to a form of light.”

Greg Brockman ’13 (enterprise technology), chief technology officer of OpenAI. “The boundary-breaking nonprofit is dedicated to building safe AI and ensuring AI’s benefits are widely and evenly distributed.”

Ritchie Chen SM ’13, PhD ’16 (science), postdoc at the MIT Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. “Chen’s research found that dysfunctional brain regions could be stimulated by metal nanoparticles powered by magnetic fields.”

Tiffany Chu ’10 (enterprise technology), cofounder of Remix. “Chu is cofounder of Remix, a public transit platform used by more than 200 agencies worldwide…that evaluates transit data and suggests improvements.”

Lisa Conn MBA ’17 (law and policy), strategic partner and manager at Facebook. “Conn joined Facebook to lead the civic leadership team in its community partnerships program. Previously at the MIT Media Lab, Conn was program manager of the Electome Project.”

Cody Daniel ’11 (science), director of research at 3Scan. “Instead of fewer than 10 slices, 3Scan’s … robotic microscope can turn a small tissue sample into up to 60,000 slices.”

Maher Damak SM ’15 and Karim Khalil SM ’14 (energy), cofounders of Infinite Cooling. “Infinite Cooling … recaptures 80 percent of the water vapor that normally escapes from cooling towers attached to big power plants.”

Karen Dubbin ’12 (manufacturing and industry), science director at Aether. “Dubbin is the science director at Aether, which builds 3-D-printers capable of creating living tissue. She’s responsible for creating the 'bio-inks' that Aether uses to build tissues.”

Gregory Falco (enterprise technology), graduate student in the MIT Department of Urban Studies ans Planning and cofounder of NeuroMesh. “NeuroMesh provides endpoint security for smart devices and re-engineers malware to become a vaccine for the Internet of Things.”

Alistair Johnson (health care), postdoc in the MIT Laboratory for Computational Physiology. “Johnson created a database of ICU records used by 4,000 researchers from 30 countries to conduct clinical research.”

Brent Keller PhD ’16 (manufacturing), cofounder of Via Separations. “Via Separations develops membrane materials for separation processes. Keller [is] part of MIT’s The Engine accelerator program.”

Weihua Li ’15, MEng ’16 and Arun Saigal ’13, MEng ’13 (consumer technology), cofounders of Thunkable. “Saigal and Li decided spin-out MIT’s App Inventor tool, the drag-and-drop service for building your own app.”

Karthish Manthiram (science), assistant professor in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering. “Manthiram’s research is focused on providing farmers with fertilizer by manufacturing it out of thin air, literally, by using air, water, and solar power.”

Jess Newman MBA ’17 (energy), director of U.S agronomy at Anheuser Busch InBev. "Her team of 15 agronomists advise barley, rice, and hop farmers on how to become more efficient."

Christina Qi ’13 and Jonathan Wang ’13, MEng ’15 (finance), partners at Domeyard LP. “[Domeyard] is a small hedge fund that is using high-frequency strategies to trade U.S. equity futures and currencies.”

Ritu Raman (science), postdoc at MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. “Raman’s research focuses on understanding the dynamic interactions between biological and synthetic materials and developing bio-hybrid systems to tackle different applications. ”

Yichen Shen PhD ’16 (energy), postdoc in the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics. “Has contributed to nanophotonic breakthroughs that could shape the future of energy. Light-AI designs computer chips powered by light rather than electricity.”

Hao Sun (science), research affiliate in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “Sun’s research uses analytics and machine learning combined with  internet-of-things enabled sensors to track the health of buildings.”

Scott Sundvor ’12 (consumer technology), cofounder of Nima. “Nima is a portable bluetooth-enabled device that tests foods for allergens before you eat. The company has raised more than $20 million between venture funding and government grants.”

Michael Tomovich SM ’14 (manufacturing), cofounder of Kuvee. “Kuvee has engineered a patented, smart wine bottle that prevents oxygen from reaching the wine inside, and has raised $10 million in venture funding to roll it out.”

Sin Wang SM ’15 (science), cofounder of TetraScience. “Wang is cofounder and CTO of TetraScience, which is bringing the internet of things to daily lab work. The company has raised over $10 million in venture capital.”

Andrew Warren PhD ’16 (health care), founding scientist at Glympse Bio. “Based on Andrew Warren’s PhD at MIT, Glympse Bio uses modular nanoparticle sensors to create diagnostics for diseases potentially including cancer. ”

You Wu SM ’14 (manufacturing), cofounder of Pipeguard Robotics. “Wu’s company, Pipeguard Robotics, manufactures a shuttlecock-shaped robot that travels through water pipes to detect leaks.”

Jenny Xu ’19 (games), founder of JCSoft Inc. “Xu has released nine mobile games that have been downloaded over 3.5 million times, including Can You Escape Fate.”

Julia Yu ’10 (finance), investment analyst at Millennium Management. “Emerging markets trader with big role on a large macro team at billionaire Israel Englander’s $34 billion hedge fund.”

A version of this article originally appeared on the Slice of MIT blog.

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