| 創意新秀TOP100 |
|
|
|
 |
 |  Deadly genetic defects often involve single-nudeotide polymorphisms—single changes in the base pairs that make up DNA.AS a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, Steven Laken discovered that such a change occurs in six percent of Ashkenazi Jews and correlates with a 20 to 30 percent risk of colon cancer. With 20 mil-lion Ashkenazi Jews potentially at risk, Laken was not satisfied with simply finding the defect; he wanted to devise a rapid test for it. He created a lab procedure that separates DNA into fragments and then uses mass spectrometry to quickly search the fragments for the polymorphism. Doctors are now using the technique to screen patients with Ashkenazi backgrounds for colon cancer.After completing his graduate work, Laken joined Maynard,MA-bascd Exact Sciences, where he is now adapting the innovation for broader genetic tests, including one for nonpolyposis colon cancer, the most common inherited form of the disease. Laken believes his methods could spot virtu-ally any illness with a genetic component, from asthma to heart disease.
| | LAKEN | | STEVEN | | AGE 30 | | MEDICINE | | EXACT SCIENCES |
|
| | |  At 16, Raymond Lau wrote Stuffit, which soon became the prevailing software for compressing files on Macintosh computers so they take up less space. But Lau really heard his calling when he realized"the mathematical modeisfor data compression are pretty similar to those for language processing."He joined MIT's Spoken Language Systems Group in 1994 and was central to its Galaxy project, producing software to
| | LAU | | RAYMOND | | AGE 30 | | SOFTWARE | | IPHRASE THCHNOLOGIES |
|
| | |  Mad-cow disease occurs when an unruly protein called a priori causes healthy proteins in cattle brains to misfold.The same is true for the human versions of mad cow—"variant' Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is contracted from beef,and the naturallyoccurring"sporadic"form.Butunti! Kelvin Lee unleashed a new style of protein analysis, diagnosing these maladies required a postmortem brain bi-opsy—obviouslv,toolateforpatients.During postdoctoral work at Caltech in 1996, Lee identified a marker protein for sporadic Creutzfeldt-
| | LEE | | KELVIN | | AGE 32 | | MEDICINE | | CORNELL UNIVERSITY |
|
| | |  Singapore leads the world in fighting traffic with technology.Vehicle sensors are ubiquitous,and so are message signs warning drivers of upcorning jams. Drivers are even charged higher tolls during rush hour. But when the island government seeks
| | LEE | | DER-HORNG | | AGE 34 | | TRANSPORTATION | | NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE |
|
| | |  While involved in biomedical studies funded by NASA,CoriLathan realized that astronauts in orbit encounter physical challenges much like those faced by people with disabilities-An astronaut, for example, must learn to move in an awkward
| | LATHAN | | CORINNA E. | | AGE 34 | | MEDICINE | | ANTHROTRONIX |
|
| | |  Most matter isn't very smart. But some exotic materials have memory: you can bend them, but when heated they return to their original shape. Engineers have tinkered with these materials for robotic and automotive applications, but poly-mer chemist Andreas Lendlein envisions their use in implantable therapeutic devices. In 1997,
| | LENDLEIN | | ANDREAS | | AGE 32 | | MATERIALS | | MNEMOSCIENCE |
|
| | |  In 1997, after finishing her PhD and starting up Imagen in Cambridge, MA, Pamela Lipson would get phone calls from her mentor, Alex d' Arbel off, chairman of the MIT Corporation. "Focus/'he'd always tell her. Lipson had devised algorithms that could rapidly identify and clas- sify digital images. Venture capitalists wanted them, but for far-flung applications: to improve Web searches for images, or for face recogni- tion, video-database indexing or pharmaceuti- cal R&D. But it was not clear any of these emerging markets would embrace Lipson's technology. In a quest for real customers, Lipson bet on inspection of printed circuit boards. She adapted Imagen's software so it could identify production errors from a digital snapshot without misidentifying normal variations in parts. She designed a straightforward interface so users could easily modify the software. Inspections using Imagen software enhanced pro- ductivity without introducing lag. "What used to take five minutes now takes 20 seconds," says Paul Keating at Teradyne, which has rights to use Lipson's technology. Now that's focus.
| | LIPSON | | PAMELA | | AGE 34 | | SOFTWARE | | IMAGEN |
|
| | |  Chemist Jeffrey Long is daring to remake the ubiquitous computer hard drive. Long is devising ways in which chemists can assemble large inorganic molecules packed with different metals to create a host of novel materials for use in the emerging field of nanotechnology. His first target is the molecular magnet, a chemical structure whose electrons can be set spinning in synchrony by a magnetic field. Molecular magnets are a potential replacement for the increasingly crowded metallic films that con- stitute computer hard drives. Each molecular magnet could represent one bit of memory, enabling storage densities athousand times greater than those of the best existing films. Long began building his own molecular magnets in 1997, demonstrating a scheme for packing them with progressively more chromium, cobalt and nickel. Unfortunately, his best clusters can only be magnetized at a chilly -270 °C, just 3 °C above absolute zero. Mak- ing more practical molecular magnets may take years, but if this field heats up, it could revolutionize computer storage.
| | LONG | | JEFFREY | | AGE 32 | | NANOTECHNOLOGY | | UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY |
|
| | |  Ihor Lys wants to color your world with light that morphs, fades and blends in computerized pat- terns, thanks to multihued arrays of light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Lys came to lighting after 111 years at Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied electrical engineering and robotics. While working on an LED-based display for a robot, he realized that by combining bright blue LEDs—just then being reported in labs—with existing red and green ones, he could create new possibilities for digitally controlled illumination. But it took circuit design virtuosity to produce lush visual environments using these simple indicator lights. In 1997 he teamed up with engineer George Mueller and launched Boston-based Color Kinetics, which reported revenues of $17 million in 2001. Colors from its LED fixtures fill corporate lobbies, swimming pools, spas—and even emanate from the cables of Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Bridge. Lys' keeps pulling off miracles/says the MIT Media Lab's Michael Hawley, a Color Kinetics board member. But Lys views his mission in simple terms: "I see things that are expensive and difficult, and I want to make them cheap and easy."
| | LYS | | IHOR | | AGE 28 | | HARDWARE | | COLOR KINETICS |
|
| | |  Christina Lampe-Onnerud's energy is bound-less. She's a cellist,a master of jazz dance and has directed award-winning choruses. Bound-less energy is also her technological goal. Dur-ing doctoral work in inorganic chemistry in her native Sweden, Lampe-Onnerud patented a new cathode material that increased the power of lithium batteries. After leading research devisinq hiqh-enerqy materials at two startups, she joined New Jersey-based Bell Communications Research in 1995.There she helped develop prototypes of the first lithium batteries made from thin-film polymers and the first practical process for manufacturing them.The batteries were smaller, more powerful and safer than conventional lithium batteries.Today the technology is licensed by many major battery makers. With seven more patents filed, Lampe-Onnerud now oversees 10 tabs that investigate new battery materials forTiax, which bought them from Cambridge, MA-based consulting firm Arthur D, Little. As a consultant, Lampe-Onnerud has led research teams at numerous com- panies. Her goal:"to cram as much power as possible into a battery without it blowing up."
| | LAMPE-ONNERUD | | CHRISTINA | | AGE 34 | | MATERIALS | | TIAX |
|
| | |  Unchallenged by high-school physics labs, Mariangela Lisanti went looking for a "real" project the summer after her junior year. She approached nanotechnology expert Mark Reed at Yate University. His challenge: design a better way to measure the conductance of a single atom in a nanowire. With virtually no help, Lisanti taught herself quantum mechanics, built an apparatus at Yale and generated data. Reed was floored:"ln two months she did what often takes postdocs one or two years—with significantly less supervision." After her senior year, Lisanti improved her apparatus so it generated more data in a day than other approaches did in three months. She spent $35 on parts; other setups cost $100,000. Reed says Lisanti also unveiled aspects of conductance "never observed before." Researchers nationwide have asked
to use her technique.The first student to place first in the Intel Science Talent Search and the Siemens Westinghouse Science and Technology Competition, Lisanti is now a
freshman at Harvard University.''My passion," she says with a joyous smile/'is to explain things that haven't been explained."
| | LISANTI | | MARIANGELA | | AGE 18 | | NANOTECHNOLOGY | | HARVARD UNIVERSITY |
|
| | |  After emigrating from Ukraine to Chicago as a teenager, Max Levchin enrolled as a computer science student at the University of Illinois so he could create and break codes. He moved to Silicon Valley after graduation to start a company based on his cryptography passion. In 1999, he cofounded PayPal in Palo Alto, CA, which quickly became the Internet's leading person-to-person payments processor. One in four transactions on eBay is settled using PayPal's system for debiting and crediting checking accounts and charge cards. In February, the company went public, raising $70 million. As chief technology officer, Lev-chin not only manages servers that store encrypted data about the company's 15 million members but has led the development of an antifraud program called lgor, named after a Russian fraudster it helped apprehend in 2000. Lgor monitors PayPal's transactions for unusual behavior, alerting personnel to freeze suspicious accounts or head offcash en route to dubious destina-tions.The FBI has also enlisted lgor to combat wire fraud. Citibank and Bank One, and even eBay itself, have launched rival online payment services, but none has matched PayPal's market share.
| | LEVCHIN | | MAX | | AGE 26 | | INTERNET AND WEB | | PAYPAL |
|
| |
|
Source From: TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
June 2002
|
|
|
產業智庫 
|