35 Innovators Under 35
Some members of our 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. We hope that these stories about them surprise and inspire you. —The Editors
2012 TR35 Winners
Sarbajit Banerjee
Windows that block heat—but let it through when you want them to
Mircea Dincă
Using sponges to improve and store alternative fuels
Prashant Jain
Tuning nanocrystals to make tinier, more efficient switches for optical computing and solar panels
Nanshu Lu
Soft, flexible electronics bond to skin and even organs for better health monitoring
Joyce Poon
A tiny roller coaster for light could help keep data centers cool
Pratheev Sreetharan
Mass-producible tiny machines snap into place like objects in a pop-up book
Bozhi Tian
Artificial tissue that can monitor and improve health down to the level of individual cells
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
