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 |  Marrying biological and electronic systems could yield advances in drug discovery, bioweapon detection—even computing. But the chemistry must bejust right for living cells and electronics to talk. Milan Mrksich is the per-fect matchmaker.The University of Chicago chemist coats the surfaces of electronic devices with organic molecules that can convert a chemical signal into an electrical one, and vice versa—creating a means of communication unlike anything developed by the handful of other researchers working on hybrid devices. Cells in a bioweapon detector, for example,could produce an enzyme when infected by a virus. The enzyme would interact with molecules on the surface of a microchip, triggering anelectri-cal signal that would set off an alarm. With ending from the U.S. Department of Defense, Mrksich aims to build a prototype detector within five years. He also envisions computing devices that would exploit the different ways living and electronic systems handle information.But for now, Mrksich is just excited that he's sparked a conversation between cells and circuits.
| | MRKSICH | | MILAN | | AGE 33 | | MATERIALS | | UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO |
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| | |  While Rob—don't call him Robert—Malda may fit the irreverent hacker stereotype, his finest hack does not. Malda is founder of Hol-land. Mi-based Slashdot, a Web site cum online community cum Internet Zeitgeist- meter visited by more than 250,000 surfers daily. What started in 1997 as an online hang- out for Malda's cronies to trade banter on geek subjects is now "the number one site for tech news and geek ranting," according to the Washington Post. Contributors recommend news items to Slashdot, where Malda and his small staff create links to the stories and write introductory paragraphs. Readers post comments, which are then graded by other readers. Many times. Web sites whose addresses are cited experience the" Slashdot effect'—an increase in traffic so sharp that their opera- tions sometimes halt. The open-source program that runs Slashdot, which Malda created and regularly works on, is intuitive enough to have attracted 500,000 registered users. Countless others have downloaded it to run their own online discussion groups. As Malda continues to refine the Slashdot experience, he will refine the way the world experiences the Internet.
| | MALDA | | ROB | | AGE 25 | | INTERNET AND WEB | | SLASHDOT |
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| | |  If laboratories are ever to become factories that can produce human organs, scientists must find ways to grow cells faster and in a more controllable way. A chemical engineer who trained at the intensively competitive Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Surya Mallapragada is closing in on that goal. Mallapragada has designed biodegradable polymer scaffolding to guide the growth of individual cells in the same way that wooden supports guide the tendrils of a grapevine. In experiments, she implanted her scaffolds in rats, tied the ends of torn nerve cells to them and showed that the cells could relink by growing along fine grooves on the polymer surface. Carving the grooves was key; the usual technique of bombarding the scaffold with ions degrades the polymer, so Mallapra- gada used alternatives like laser etching and atomic-force microscopy that minimize degradation. To entice tissue to grow quickly, Mallapragada lined the grooves with special cells that ooze growth-inducing proteins. When she's not busy teaching nerve cells to grow, Mallapragada spends a little time learning tae kwon do.
| | MALLAPRAGADA | | SURYA | | AGE 29 | | MEDICINE | | IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY |
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| | |  One of the first things you notice about Scott Manalis's CV is a substantial list of patents. A tour of his orderly but jam-packed lab, replete with an ultrasensitive micro- accelerometer and microelectromechanical devices, confirms that Manalis tikes to build gadgets that work on the scale of nanometers and micrometers. Trained in applied physics, and an expert on the equip- ment used to image and manipulate atoms, he hopes to create revolutionary new tools for advancing molecular biology. He wants to get direct information on DNA or protein molecules by binding them to, say, silicon transistors or tiny cantilevers. His dream, he says, is that within five to 15 years, he'll be able to "stick a probe into a cell, connect it to a computer' and get real-time information on the cell's proteins and genes. Such a tool would be invaluable to molecular biologists, replacing weeks or months of laboratory analysis. It may take a while, but Manalis is already creating the technology to make his dream reality.
| | MANALIS | | SCOTT | | AGE 29 | | NANOTECHNOLOGY | | MIT |
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| | |  Steve McCanne's career as a rock star fizzled in high school. But noodling on a synthesizer did spark his interest in digital signal processing, which blossomed into graduate work at Berke-ley National Laboratory. There he helped his rnentor, Van Jacobson, invent the "Internet mul-ticast backbone" (Mbone), which led to Internet standards for streaming media and enables people at scattered locations to collaborate using video, audio and a whiteboard. Among Mbone's first users: NASA engineers. In 1998, McCanne cofounded FastForward Networks and pioneered the first scalable techniques for live Internet broadcasting. In 2000 Internet giant Inktomi bought FastForward for $1.3 billion to get its multimedia tools—and McCanne, now chief technology officer. Inktomi, in Foster City, CA, performs cataloguing and searching for huge portals like America Online and MSN.McCanne is now devising systems to let big busi-nesses, including Ford Motor, McDonald's and Merrill Lynch use video webcasting throughout their own networks.Someday he'd like to write a book about'how the Internet really works."
| | McCANNE | | STEVE | | AGE 33 | | INTERNET AND WEB | | INKTOML |
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| | |  Few people consider the internal-combustion engine environmentally friendly. Larry Mianzo could help change that. Mianzo is a key player in the auto industry's efforts to build cleaner, more effi- cient engines. His innovations could usher in something called'' electromagnetic variable valve timing." In an automobile engine, valves are opened and closed in a fixed pat-tern by rotating camshafts. Eliminating the cams and moving each valve with an electromagnetic actuator allows optimal control of valve timing, ending power losses and providing a more tightly controlled Combustion temperature. The result: a 15 to 25 percent boost in fuel economy and dramatically lower emissions. Mianzo has been working on automobile controls for the past eight years—first for Ford Motor, now for its spin off Visteon, in Dearborn, MI. He has 12 patents issued or pending, include-ing one on a novel road simulation strategy for testing new vehicles that has helped saveFordMotor$1 millionayear. Mianzo has accomplished all this while earning a PhD and hasn't missed a day of work since 1992.
| | MIANZO | | LARRY | | AGE 34 | | TRANSPORTATION | | VISTEON |
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| | |  It's one thing to devise a key innovation for the Internet. Lou Montulli has designed half a dozen. White a computer science major at the University of Kansas in 1991, he wrote Lynx, a program that enabled a computer user to automatically link text documents. It became one of the earliest and most popular World Wide Web browsers. At the same time, Montulli was a leading figure in the grass-roots effort to improve several fundamental computer languages and protocols, including the hypertext transfer protocol—the addressing scheme that links Web pages—and HTML, the language for creating text and images on Web pages. In 1994 he moved to California to work as a founding engineer at what became Netscape, devel-oping the first commercial Web application. Not all of his innovations have been universally embraced: he is responsible for cookies—data files that enable Web sites to recognize return-ing users—as well as blink tags—those endlessly flashing words on Web pages-Shrugging off the burden of being named People magazine's sexiest Internet mogul of 1999, the freelancing Montulli continues to experiment with new ways to exploit the Internet.
| | MONTULLI | | LOU | | AGE 32 | | INTERNET AND WEB | | FREELANCER |
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| | |  Stem cells have become icons of medical hope, and Sean J. Morrison has made fundamental dis- coveries that explain their workings. As a post-doc at Caltech, Morrison devised a way to harvest neural stem cells from fresh tissue rather than
from tissue cultured in the lab, where stem cells might have been created as an artifact of the culturing process. In so doing, Morrison clarified many of the cells' properties-'He is one of the most talented stem cell researchers/says David J. Anderson. Morrison's advisor at Caltech. While studying similarities between stem cells and cancer cells, Morrison and a collaborator made the surprising discovery that tumor growth may be driven by rare "cancer stem cells." Now an assis-tant professor at the University of Michigan, Morrison recently cofounded Cancer Stem Cell Genomics to investigate the possibility that that discovery could lead to better ways of develop-ing cancer-killing drugs-The nascent company is Morrison's second business foray. In college he developed an inexpensive process for mass-producing fungi, but his company lacked capital. Given stem cells' medical applications, his new business is not likely to have similar trouble.
| | MORRISON | | SEANJ. | | AGE 33 | | MEDICINE | | UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN |
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Source From: TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
June 2002
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產業智庫 
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