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Credit: Johnny Chung Lee
Johnny Lee, 28
Streamlining human-computer interactions
Microsoft
When the Nintendo Wii came out, most people saw a fun new way to play video games. Johnny Lee saw a surprisingly good infrared camera that could make innovative computer interfaces affordable. At the 2008 Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference, he drew spontaneous applause when he demonstrated two devices he'd hacked together, which used the $40 Wii remote and some inexpensive hardware to simulate systems that can cost thousands. The audience may not have realized that Lee had spent no more than "a few days" on each. "I have some knack," he says, "for being able to identify easy projects that have a relatively big impact"--like those at right. Having completed his PhD at Carnegie Mellon, Lee is honing that knack as a researcher in Microsoft's hardware division. Read why Lee thinks researchers should focus on bringing technologies to all. --Larry Hardesty
2008 TR35 Winners
Blaise Agüera y Arcas
Building immersive 3-D environments
Dries Buytaert
Simple, flexible Web publishing
Jenova Chen
Gaming with the flow
Tanzeem Choudhury
Inferring social networks automatically
Jack Dorsey
Personal updates made simple
Stefanus Du Toit
Programming for parallel processors
Seth Hallem
Deconstructing software to find bugs
Xian-Sheng Hua
Enhancing video search
Sundar Iyer
Making memory at Internet speed
Farinaz Koushanfar
Locking microchips to prevent piracy
Johnny Lee
Streamlining human-computer interactions
Meredith Ringel Morris
Searching websites jointly
Andrew Ng
Building household robots
Adam Smith
Making sense of e-mail madness
JB Straubel
Engineering electric sports cars
Eric Wilhelm
Putting DIY projects online
Robert Wood
Building robotic flies