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 |  For years, researchers have dreamed of improving air traffic safety and efficiency by giving pilots a real-time 3-D display that shows how to navigate terrain.even in bad weather.But merging Global Positioning System data with graphical displays of the earth's surface proved dauntingly expensive.As a PhD candidate in aeronautical engineering at Stanford University.Andrew Barrows delivered the first practical, inexpensive "highway in the sky." He did it by writing software that merges GPS location information with images from terrain data-bases and shows the pilot a series of rectangles.The pilot need only keep the plane flying through these targets.'Fifteen years from now,every airplane will have a sophisticated version of this,”says John Hansman, MIT professor of aeronautics and astronaLitics.While the Federal Aviation Administration works on certifying this type of system. Bairows has left academe to become president of NavSD in PaloAltO ,CA.One big client, Boeing, is adapting his technology for military use, Nav3D is also exploring displays that would help construction crews 'see' underground gas lines or guide firefighters through smoky buildings.
| | BARROWS | | ANDREW | | AGE 34 | | TRANSPORTATION | | NAV3D |
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| | |  When he was 10, Doug Barlage started making electronic toys with store-bought transistors. Now at Intel, he is building the world's
smallest,fastest transistors for future computers. In particular, he has improved the devices'
gate oxide—a thin layer that prevents transistors from leaking current but limits their size
and speed. Intel's latest version is just three atoms thick. Until Barlage came along,
researchers struggled with how to determine the electrical properties of materials so thin;
some thought it pointless.Barlage forged ahead,getting more performance from
advanced measuring tools than their manufacturers thought possible."We drove right
through the stop sign.'he says.The results allowed Barlage to build the optimal gateoxide configurations.Using designs made
possible by Barlage's measurements, Intel has twice set the world record for transistor size
and speed.and a third record is close at hand.
Coworkers describe Barlageas'meticulous and driven'as he explores just how far he can
push transistor technology.'We're probing the physical bamefs,'hesays,'but haven't
seen any limits yet.'
| | BARLAGE | | DOUG | | AGE 32 | | NANOTECHNOLOGY | | INTEL |
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| | |  Intelligence.When he approached managers with ideas based on insects,they ignored him. He left in 1996 to become a research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, where he studied the behaviors of insect colonies, including how ants self-organize to find the most efficient paths to food. The key, he says, is spotting the"emergent behavior" of the colony. In 1999 he started consulting company Icosystem in Cambridge, MA, which has worked with BP, Eli Lilly and Unilever. Using Bonabeau's ant based algorithms,Southwest Airlines revised work procedures and the flow of baggage in
its cargo-handling process.The scheme cut package transfer rates by 70 percent at busy hubs, saving the company millions of dollars.
| | BONABEAU | | ERIC | | AGE 34 | | SOFTWARE | | ICOSYSTEM |
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| | |  Think of the human genome as Tolstoy's War and Peace in the original Russian—immense,exciting, but for most, indecipherable. British bioinformatician Ewan Bimey wants to make the genome's information accessible to all. His Ensembi software and data allow researchers to find information on the Web on any known
or predicted gene and to automatically match pieces of genes they have sequenced with other genes—without tediously combing through endless raw-sequence data. Cofounded by Birney,the Ensembl project has become one of the most popular resources for genome research, and its software is freely available to use and modify. With his related work adapting programming languages such as Peri and Java
to biological projects, Birney has become a force in the bioinformatics open-source
community."ln bioinformatics" he says,"the software is actually not that important.What's much more important is the data.”Bimey's ambitious tools will help researchers deliver on the promise of new drugs and treatments derived from the Human Genome Project.
To biological projects, Birney has become a force in the bioinformatics open-source
community."ln " he says,"the software is actually not that important.What's much more important is the data.”Bimey's ambitious tools will help researchers deliver on the promise of new drugs and treatments derived from the Human Genome Project.
| | BIRNEY | | EWAN | | AGE 29 | | BIOTECHNOLOGY | | EUROPEAN BIOINFORMATICS INSTITUTE |
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| | |  Stephen Boppart grew up in Illinois farm country, where he acquired a get-things-done attitude. His master's-degree advisor says,"The speed with which he can conceptualize, test and implement is remarkable."While simultaneously completing a PhD in medical and electrical engineering at MIT and an MD at Harvard, he published 44 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. During those seven years, Boppart helped dramatically improve the resolution of optical-coherence tomography.an imaging technique that sends near-infrared laser light into a person's tissues and then interprets its reflection from structures within. Boppart also converted the hardware into a handheld probe that looks like a laser pointer. Surgeons at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston are using it to see through a patient's skin before making an incision. Recently Boppart received funding from the Whitaker Foundation, the National Cancer Institute and NASA to determine how to use optical-coherence tomography in cancer diagnosis. He is now developing contrast agents, such as carbon and melanin, that will increase tumor's resolution when seen using this technique.
| | BOPPART | | STEPHEN | | AGE 33 | | MEDICINE | | UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN |
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| | |  Angela Belcher"fell in love"with molecules as a college freshman.As a doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, she answered provocative questions that fused the biological and physical sciences. Chief among them: could proteins sculpt the structure of semiconductors? Belcher identified a series of proteins that bind to semiconducting nanoparticles and used them to help direct the assembly of the nanoparticles in ways not possible before. Belcher and her postdoctoral advisor, Evelyn Hu, formed a company,Semzyme,based in Santa Barbara, CA, to create such protein tools. Now at the University of Texas, Belcher says her passion for science remains so intense that she often wakes at 2:00 a.m. ready to head to the lab. Recently, her team discovered a novel way to make liquid crystalline films. Belcher is also using proteins loaded with semiconductors to help create nanoscale"quantumwires"for tiny electronic components. Belcher plans
to continue her research this fall as an MIT professor.
| | BELCHER | | ANGELA | | AGE 34 | | NANOTECHNOLOGY | | UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN |
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| | |  In 1994, Richard Barton devised a plan to revolutionize the travel industry. He convinced Bill Gates, his boss, that online travel planning had a future and in 1996 launched Expedia. In 1999, Barton spun the company off from Microsoft and has since grown it into a thriving dot com.Today the site receives queries from 15 million people a month. In February, USA Networks—which ownsTicketmaster and Citysearch—acquired majority interest in Expedia for morethan$1.3 billion. Barton, who helped develop the MS- DOS 5.0 and Windows 95 operating systems, says,"0ur competitive differential is all about technology." Under his leadership as chief executive officer, Expedia developed an award- winning algorithm that compares prices on billions offlight combinations and allows customers to find and buy the lowest fares. Barton now wants to make the customers' trans- actions even easier and more secure while customizing services to each person's buying habits."Helping people take a trip is fundamental to our long-term dream/he says.
| | BARTON | | RICHARD | | AGE 34 | | INTERNET AND WEB | | EXPEDIA |
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| | |  Today's mobile data networks are spotty. If you're not within range of a transmitter or are cut off by large obstacles like skyscrapers, you're out of luck. The solution could be networks that form only when needed, and Elizabeth M. Belding-Royer may deliver them. As a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Belding-Royer worked with Nokia research fellow Charles Perkins to develop the necessary network protocols—the operational instructions. If your handheld device finds itself with a nonexistent orfailing signal, it can use Belding-Royer's protocols to find and connect with nearby wireless devices. These neighbors then find a path through still other wireless devices to create an ad hoc but solid connection. Designing the protocols helped Belding-Royer landa professorship at UC Santa Barbara, and the Internet Engineering Task Force is now considering turning them into standards.Applied,the protocols could eliminate"dead zones"that wireless transmitters don't reach and make it cheaper and easier to set up networks everywhere—from the Sahara to downtown Los Angeles.
| | BELDING-ROYER | | ELIZABETH M. | | AGE 27 | | TELECOMMUNICATIONS | | UNIVERSITY OF CALFORNIA,SANTA BARBARA |
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| | |  Vincent Berger has two jobs,twolabs,eventwin babies.As a researcher at Paris-based aerospace giant Thales,he developed the technology behind a new short-wavelength night-vision camera for military surveillance. But he's best known for his theoretical contributions in optical semiconductors, quickly beconning a linchpin of telecommunications. At 29, Berger was the first to describe ways to integrate pho-
tonic crystals with bulky optical devices such as routers. Many think this work will lead to wafer-thin chips that can manipulate photons the way semiconductors control electrons. He was also first to demonstrate that light waves could change color in gallium arsenide, the superfast material of choice for the ubiquitous semiconductor laser. While others convert Ssrger's theories into technologies such as miniature cryptography devices, telecom traffic busters and air pollution detectors, he is busy balancing his position at Thales with his new
role as university professor. He looks forward to forging industry-university partnerships—not often found in France—to boost the commercialization of photonics research.
| | BERGER | | VINCENT | | AGE 33 | | TELECOMMUNICATIONS | | THALES |
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| | |  When most people speak of advanced materials. They mean semiconductors or biopolymers. But Daniel granagan means steel.The materials scientist is transforming metals industries with his new"superhard steel." His novel process rapidly cools molten steel into a glasslike solid, then heats the solid to form a unique nano structure.The result is a coating that outperforms the hardest metal coatings, even tungsten carbide, at one-third the price.Superhard steel is cheap and easy enough to manufacture that applications could range from rock crushers to kitchen
knives. More than 500 companies have expressed interest in using Branagan's material to make tougher, lighter, longer-lasting products. Branagan may license the patent from the U.S. Department of Energy—which oversees his lab—to create a spinoff company.The Michigan native launched his career 12 years ago by developing tougher rare-earth magnets for computer hard drives. But while other metallurgists tout Branagan's innovations as feats of nanoscale engineering,to this ranch owner outdoorsmanthey're"just fancy steels."
| | BRANAGAN | | DANIEL | | AGE 33 | | MATERIALS | | IDAHO NATIONAL ENGINEERING ANDENVIRONMENTAL LABORATORY |
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| | |  Lasers are found In everyday products, from compact-disc players to bar code readers. But in a laser beam strong and focused enough to shoot down an enemy aircraft or chisel pin-sized mechanical parts out of metal blocks, the hyperexcited photons have to be controlled so they don't scatter. Improvements on solid state lasers have been stymied by the tendency of a beam to distort as the crystal at the heart of a laser heats up. Arnaud Brignon,who was born eight years after the laser was invented in 1960, has solved this problem by developing a self-correcting mirror made from nonlinear crystals that cancels the distortions. His division of multinational aerospace giant
Thales.in Orsay, France, is identifying markets for commercial versions of the laser, which Brignon says could be ready in three years. While working on a next-generation laser, Brignon finds time to hunt for dinosaur remains in the fields of France. He recently discovered a tooth from a 10O-million-year-old armored ankylosaur that was previously undocumented in his country.
| | BRIGNON | | ARNAUD | | AGE 33 | | HARDWARE | | THALES |
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| | |  Pathogens often exploit our cells to thrive. Fiona Brinkman therefore hypothesizes that some of their genes are similar to human genes. By identifying such genes computationally, Brinkman is trying to understand how drugs could stop pathogens from storming the body's fortress. Brinkman coordinates this interdisciplinary work through an online"pathogenomics" project she runs from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. It uses a free program she developed called PhyloBlast to evaluate relationships betweengenes by comparing their sequences and the proteins they code for. Previously, Brinkman organized the first Internet-based effort to refine and annotate bacterial genome data, focusing on P.aeruginosa, a widely drug-resistant bacterium that causes fatal infections in cystic-fibrosis patients.The group gained critical insight into how the bacterium works, which had eluded researchers.''Once we have the parts list for how the bug is functioning," Brinkman says, "we can figure out new approaches to drugs." Her collaborative electronic approach is now
| | BRINKMAN | | FIONA | | AGE 34 | | BIOTECHNOLOGY | | SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY |
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| | |  Today's World Wide Web is a jungle. How to speedily and smartly sort through it? More than 150 million times a day, users turn to Google, the four-year-old search engine developed by a pair of Stanford University graduate students. Sergey Brin and Larry Page (p.84), PhD candidates in computer science, often found themselves stymied when hunting for data/innovation in search had halted," recalls the Russian-born Brin, who had been researching data mining. Brin and Page dropped their doctoral work and came up with PageRank.The software measures the importance of a given Web page by how many other pages link to it—and by how important those linked pages are. As soon as Mountain View, CA-based Google
went live in 1998, it attracted Web surfers who wanted rational search results.Today nobody lists as many Web pages (over two billion) or sorts them as fast (a typical search takes under a second). Now that Google is a success, Brin, once known as a jokester, says he has turned serious.''Jokes are no longer allowed—that's what our PR people tell me,"the copresident says.
| | BRIN | | SERGEY | | AGE 28 | | INTERNET AND WEB | | GOOGLE |
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| | |  Although he's a doctor, Stephen Brossette thinks he can save more lives by using technology than byseeing patients. As a University of Alabama at Birmingham graduate student, Brossette developed a mathematical technique for finding subtle, otherwise unnoticed patterns in medical data. His approach can reveal an impending outbreak of a hospital- borne infection by identifying patients who share similar demographic backgrounds, frequent the same hospital rooms and have the same odd microorganisms in their lab cultures. In 2000, Brossette formed MedMined in Birmingham, AL, to market his innovations. The company currently has eight employees serving as many hospitals.They sift through masses of data provided by the hospitals to uncover patterns of nascent antibiotic resistance and outbreaks of infectious pneumonia, diarrhea and other diseases. Brossette says early detection can improve intervention—vital because two million patients acquire infections in
U.S. hospitals each year, and 90,000 of them die.The amateur photographer and Cajun/Creole chef is also analyzing how best to apply his tools to bioterrorism and contaminated foods.
| | BROSSETTE | | STEPHEN | | AGE 30 | | MEDICINE | | MEDMINED |
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| | |  Chris Burge admits it’s been hard to choose a research focus. In high school he won math contests but in college majored in biology. He traveled to Nicaragua to see if medicine was his calling but wound up teaching people there about computers. He finally settled on the interface between biology and mathematics and returned for graduate study in math at Stanford University, his alma mater. The sophisticated
computer program he developed there, called Genscan, predicts the locations of genes in the human genome and what proteins they produce. Released in 1997, Genscan is the most popular program of its type. Geneticists and molecular biologists are using it to identify human disease genes and potential drug targets and are applying it to agriculture. It is available free on the Web for nonprofit use and has been licensed to dozens of companies. Now at MIT's biology department, Burge has developed a companion program, GenomeScan, that compares known proteins to increase the accuracy of Genscan predictions. He hopes to answer fundamental questions that could shed light on how human genes are expressed.
| | BURGE | | CHRIS | | AGE 33 | | BIOTECHNOLOGY | | MIT |
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Source From: TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
June 2002
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產業智庫 
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