MIT Science and Technology Review's Young Heroes of the Year, medical health, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction

On August 23, US time, the MIT Technology Review published the 16th TR35 list, which is the list of 35 young innovators under the age of 35 worldwide. Elites are outstanding in terms of creativity, perseverance, and management capabilities. Their innovations span medical, energy, computing, and advanced electronics; their careers include startups, R&D, and corporate giants. They are leaders in their respective fields.

Among the 35 people on the list, there are 6 Chinese. They are researcher at the IBM Research Center, Cao Qing, assistant professor of the University of Illinois, Yan Ying, postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, and former researcher at the Baidu Deep Learning Lab. Chief designer Gu Jiawei, associate professor of Tsinghua University Zhang Yihui and professor of Nanjing University Zhu Jia. In addition, there are Chinese people such as Yang Yujing, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

This year, the MIT Science and Technology Review received hundreds of nominations. After the editorial screening, the list was submitted to third parties for evaluation of the potential influence of the candidates in the invention, which eventually formed the list of young heroes of this year. The list is divided into five categories, namely Visionaries, Inventors, Entrepreneurs, Pioneers, and Humanitarians.

Visionaries

Classic technology, new applications – relying on a different perspective, these young visionaries have found new applications of classic technology.

Maithilee Kunda, 32, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Vanderbilt University, USA

Autistic patients have triggered her new ideas for building artificial intelligence technology.

Her research began in the days of studying artificial intelligence systems at the graduate level. One day, she read the book on the study of zoology, Temple in Latin by "Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin." In the book, the scientist chronicles how her autism gives her a perspective that most people don't have.

Kunda realizes that most artificial intelligence systems rely on variables, numbers, and tables to think, rather than “image thinking” like autistic people.

If the artificial intelligence system also thinks based on images—such as rotating and flattening images—what would happen? If Temple Gelatin can make amazing achievements based on image thinking, then artificial intelligence systems are fine.

Kunda studied autistic patients with image thinking ability and designed the corresponding artificial intelligence system.

At present, the research on graphical artificial intelligence has just started, but Kunda thinks it is very promising. Artificial intelligence systems that use different methods of thinking can provide humans with a variety of problem-solving ideas. For example, if you want to quickly find the original outbreak of an epidemic, you must use a variety of options to process the massive data collected. At this time, graphical artificial intelligence can help a lot.

Kevin Esvelt, 34, Assistant Professor, Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

A scientist who is committed to developing genetic editing techniques while warning about its potential side effects.

Esvelt works at the MIT Media Lab to study how to influence ecosystem evolution. When I was 10 years old, I went to Galapagos to play and realized that evolution is a powerful force that affects the future. His hobbies are wheelbarrows and paragliders.

Currently, his work focuses on developing a technology that rapidly spreads certain genes in animal populations. What is the purpose? Eliminate mosquitoes and eliminate malaria together. He said: "Nature can't eliminate malaria, we will do it ourselves."

In fact, this technology is a double-edged sword. Is genetic drive a safe technology? Does the technology have any unknown side effects? These questions have yet to be answered. In theory, gene-driven technology should not be used to spread biological transgenes around the world, and even trials are dangerous.

His solution is to develop safe, controllable gene-driven technologies.

The FBI’s assessment of his work is that “the technology’s emphasis on genetically driven technology is of great importance to biosafety.”

Inventors

From smart sweatbands to advanced storage technologies, these innovators are creating products that are future.

Alex Hegyi, 29, Head of Research and Development at PARC

Hyperspectral cameras allow your smartphone to identify fake medicines and pick the most ripe peaches.

Alex is from PART (Practicing Open Innovation), a technology innovation company owned by Xerox. Compared with the camera he invented, the details that smartphone cameras can provide are pitiful. This is because Alex's camera records a portion of the spectrum that is invisible to the naked eye.

Because Alex's camera has acquired a wider spectrum, it can do things that ordinary smartphone cameras can't do: from picking ripe fruits - mature fruits absorb light in certain bands more, and find fake drugs - - The reflected light of the real medicine has a special pattern.

Alex hopes that in the near future, his technology will be integrated into smartphones, allowing everyone to use hyper spectral imaging to image with electromagnetic waves in a wide frequency domain.

Hyperspectral imaging technology has been used in space-to-ground remote sensing and food and drug quality testing for many years, but its size and price make it difficult for them to enter daily life.

Alex's hyperspectral camera is smaller and lighter, communicating with the host computer via the USB interface. He is equipped with a liquid crystal lens and a polarizing filter bank in front of the optical sensor.

In addition, he also wrote computer software to control the camera.

Evan Macosko, 34, Lecturer in Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital

Study how cells form tissues and organs and make major breakthroughs.

If we really want to understand the human genome, we first need to raise awareness of the differences between individual cells. Although every cell in the human body has the same DNA blueprint, at the same time, they have a very big difference in the interpretation and use of this blueprint. The existence of this difference is that there are a large number of cell types in the body, some cells will become nerve cells for memory function, but others will become toenail.

However, even in the same cell, there will be differences between individual cells. For us, how genes work in cells is a huge question mark, which seriously affects the progress of genetic medicine research.

Evan Macosko from Harvard Medical School participated in the development of a technology called "Drop-Seq". This technology will allow researchers to examine thousands of cells one by one to determine how each cell performs a genetic command.

Prior to this, existing techniques allowed researchers to examine individual cells, but these methods were often very difficult and expensive. Researchers need to move individual cells into microscopic "wells." Macosko said this: "If you accidentally put two cells in a well, you will give up."

Macosko's technology greatly speeds up the analysis. Researchers need to disassemble each cell that needs to be analyzed and attach the gene that has been run to a tiny, identification-marked bead. When the genetic material of each cell is identified, they can be analyzed quickly. The cost of this new technology is only 7 cents per cell.

Evan said that he and his team are already completing the analysis and archiving of hundreds of thousands of cells in the rat brain. Their next goal is the 86 billion neurons in the human brain and countless other cells. He intends to analyze the differences between all the cells in the human brain to find the culprit behind brain diseases such as schizophrenia, autism, and Alzheimer's disease.

Gao Wei, 31, postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley

The newly invented sweatband can monitor your health.

Gao Wei grew up in a small village in Xuzhou, China. When he was a child, he witnessed many people around him dying because of various diseases. Many people don't know that they have got sick, and it is too late when they find out. At that time, he wanted to invent a wearable electronic device to monitor the health of the individual, and to remind us of the physical defects before the lesion.

“Our body is making data all the time. There are countless wearable devices on the market, such as Apple Watch, Fitbit, but most of them can only measure the amount of exercise and vital signs, but not the information at the molecular level. "Gao Wei said. “I started thinking, can I use sweat?”

Gao Wei created a wearable device this year: a flexible printed circuit board that incorporates sensors, microprocessors, and Bluetooth communication modules. When you wear this sweatband, it analyzes the composition of your sweat and wirelessly transmits the data to the app on your phone.

Some of the sensors in the sweat-proof belt that Gao Wei invented react with the chemical components such as glucose and lactate in your sweat, and then detect the current changes caused by the reaction; another part of the sensor detects the voltage caused by sodium and potassium ions. Variety. In the latest version, he also added a sensor that can detect heavy metals.

Today, Gao Wei's sweatband has been able to analyze a large amount of data from sweat. The challenge he faced was how to use this data to analyze the health of users. Therefore, he is working with exercise physiologists to find early signs of various conditions in sweat through clinical research.

Muyinatu Lediju Bell, 32, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University

Clearer imaging techniques can be diagnosed with cancer earlier.

When she was studying undergraduate at MIT, the mother of biomedical engineer Muyinatu Lediju Bell died of cancer. Bell has always believed that if her mother's cancer was discovered earlier, she is likely to be alive.

Therefore, she decided to find out the cause of ultrasound imaging blur, which is why these blurred images prevent doctors from diagnosing cancer and other diseases.

During his time at Duke University, Bell invented a new signal processing technology that increases the clarity of ultrasound real-time imaging. This technique is more helpful for obese patients, and because fat can scatter and distort ultrasound, the symptoms in obese patients are often found later.

“I feel that an important technology that is frequently used is very unfair to a large group of patients (obese patients), (for these patients) is very unfair,” Bell said.

Today, Bell is trying to improve another non-invasive medical imaging technology. The technology called "photoacoustic imaging" is a biological/medical imaging method that combines optical and acoustic modes.

She hopes that this technology enables instant imaging of blood vessels to reduce the risk of accidental injury to the carotid artery during neurosurgery. In response, she plans to start clinical trials on patients in 2017 at Johns Hopkins University's lab.

Gu Jiawei, 30 years old, former Baidu Deep Learning Lab Director R&D Architect/Chief Designer

Designed to help, not an annoying user interface.

When he saw Gu Jiawei in a coffee shop in the 798 Art District of Beijing, he turned off the WeChat prompt to turn it off. When he took the time to check the phone, there were "more than 17,000 unread messages". Gu Jiawei said that the way we communicate with science and technology is a failure. "I don't want to be a slave to the 'unread tones'."

Gu Jiawei was once the person in charge of Baidu's human-computer interaction. One of the projects he is responsible for, DuLight Xiao Ming, is an artificial intelligence product that helps the blind. A camera worn by the user on the head or on the mobile phone can scan bills, train schedules, labels and other everyday items. The graphic, item, or text on the scanned object will be recognized.

Through the deep learning algorithm and the chip on the user's mobile phone, the recognized data will be converted into speech and delivered to the user's headset. Gu Jiawei also said: "The face recognition function is now very powerful."

Gu Jiawei's imagination of the future is a future that will not be tired of data lines and prompts, but can also enjoy the benefits of technology.

He said: "I want to bring mankind back to the era of 'no plug-in'."

Entrepreneurs

Seven young entrepreneurs tried to turn "disruptive innovation" into a "subversive company."

Christine Ho, 33, CEO of Imprint Energy

Her startup's main business is the development of a thin, soft, printable battery that is a continuation of her research at Berkeley.

With the support of traditional batteries, wearables, mobile phones and personal medical devices work very well, so what is necessary to print batteries?

Conventional batteries require a large amount of plastic and metal to be isolated and require protection circuits. Because conventional batteries rely on very severe chemical reactions, isolation materials must be used to control the discharge rate.

The chemical reaction principle of the printed battery itself makes the discharge reaction much milder, so no isolation material is needed, and it can be made very simple and light. Printed batteries rely on zinc for good value for money, and are rich in reserves and non-toxic to the human body.

So why didn't the previous battery use zinc-based technology?

First, zinc batteries are difficult to form in a rechargeable form. Second, when zinc is used in conventional batteries, a highly corrosive electrolyte is used. Considering safety, general portable devices do not use this corrosive zinc battery.

So how to solve these technical problems? Conventional batteries are made in a multi-layer structure. The electrolyte in the middle layer is like a patties sandwiched in a sandwich.

Christine Ho realized that if the electrolyte was replaced with a more stable and rechargeable electrolyte, a new zinc battery could be made.

After experimenting with a large amount of material, she obtained a material that appeared to be fully compliant and could be used to make solid-state thin-film batteries. The thin film battery can be cut and curled without affecting its performance.

Meron Gribetz, 30, CEO of Meta

A dreamer of augmented reality (AR) technology is trying to turn his vision into a business.

In 2011 Meron Gribetz founded Meta, whose goal is to augment reality through digital technology. So far, he has raised $730 million, and his products are not inferior to Microsoft's HoloLens.

This year, Grybetz released the company's latest AR product Meta 2, which is only one-third the price of HoloLens. You can wear it to see 3D images of your hands and video conversations with other Meta users. In the conversation, they can send you a 3D virtual object, which you can observe from all angles.

The common goal of Meta and HoloLens is to attract software developers to develop software for them. Gribetz is confident in this goal and he expects the AR system to replace the location of laptops, smartphones and tablets.

In 5 years, AR headsets will be as thin and light as regular glasses.

Meta is developing an operating system that seeks to get rid of the traditional Windows icon mode. Gribetz is so obsessed with the AR system that he ordered that all employees of the company stop using computer monitors and mice in the office next spring, instead using Meta 2 and the accompanying gesture tracking function.

Heather Bowerman, 31, CEO of Dot Laboratories

Cheap hormone testing technology helps women's health.

Women's response to diseases and drugs is significantly different from men in many cases, but so far there has been no effective treatment for women.

For example, hormone differences lead to different platelet characteristics in men and women, but cardiovascular drugs mainly target male physiological responses, so drugs play a more significant role in men than in women. Detailed testing of hormonal properties helps doctors design targeted drugs and treatments for women.

Bowerman is the CEO of startup Dot Laboratories, which aims to develop cheap and fast female hormone detection technology. Users only need to save a little saliva at a specific time and mail it to Dot Laboratories, and the company can analyze hormone levels and send back results to users and doctors via the web. The technology is still in beta and the company plans to officially launch the testing service in 2017.

Of course, it takes some time to develop targeted drugs for hormone levels. Even so, Anula Jayasuriya, a doctor and an investor in the medical field, said that hormone testing technology can have a positive impact on women's health care.

Kelly Gardner, 31, CEO of Zephyrus Biosciences

Gardner's company is developing a single-cell protein testing technology. What is the significance?

Protein is a fundamental component of cells, and measuring cellular protein levels is important for the diagnosis and treatment of disease. But protein testing is much more difficult than DNA testing, because there is currently no technology for protein amplification, so the sample size is pitiful.

However, the detection of single-cell proteins can help diagnose and treat cancer, so it is significant.

Major research institutions are customers of single-cell protein detection technology. Before starting product development, Zephyrus Biosciences negotiated with 100 biomedical researchers to analyze the technology of interest to the user and finally determined the development of single-cell protein detection technology.

The innovations of scientific research institutions are difficult to get out of the laboratory. One of the major reasons is that investors are not enthusiastic about the biotech companies in the initial stage – the investment in biological research is too high. Therefore, the company borrowed from the IT company and introduced an agile development model, which only raised $1.8 million in funding and only a few employees.

After two and a half years of establishment, Zephyrus Biosciences will soon be acquired by ProteinSimple.

However, Kelly Gardner considers himself a natural entrepreneur. He said that as long as he finds the right technology breakthrough, he may take the next round of adventure in the entrepreneurial Silicon Valley Bay Area.

Humanitarians

They have taken a different path and brought us a healthier, cleaner and more human-friendly world.

Sonia Vallabh, 32, a prion expert at the Broad Institute

A paper diagnosis book turned her into a medical scientist.

Five years ago, Sonia Vallabh graduated from Harvard Law School with a small consulting firm. However, a shocking medical diagnosis completely changed her life path – she suffered from genetic variations that caused brain death.

Currently, Vallabh works with her husband at the Broad Institute, a joint venture between MIT and Harvard University, and publishes research findings on a possible treatment.

As the story told by Vallabh and President Obama at the Precision Medical Conference in February:

"My tragic story begins with a small sequence error in the genome. Usually, healthy human DNA carries thousands of small errors, but most of it does not affect the health of the human body. Unfortunately My genetic variation is an unusual case. This specific gene mutation causes a fatal hereditary prion disease. In this case, the patient can live to 50 years old and then suddenly fall into dementia. And died within a year. This disease is incurable, at least there is no medicine to save.

In 2010, I saw this disease in my family. At that time, I was just married to Eric Minikel, and my 51-year-old healthy mother prepared this wonderful wedding. However, in an instant, we watched her grow thinner. At the time we didn't realize what we really experienced. It wasn't until I saw the mother's autopsy report that I realized that I had a 50% chance of inheriting the lethal genetic variation.

We immediately decided to participate in the genetic test, and after months of restless waiting, geneticists unfortunately confirmed what we were afraid of: the same pathogenic variation was found in my genome.

This cruel fact makes us start to find ways to deal with this stubborn enemy. We have tried every means to learn some of the diseases-related knowledge: going to night school, attending international conferences, and even participating in research in the laboratory.

During the day, we conduct research and study; at night, we use what we have learned to analyze disease. For four years, we have been working to explore ways to treat diseases.

I know that the road ahead is unknown, and more hard work does not guarantee a cure. But we will do everything we can to unite creative allies in all fields and work to find viable treatments to save me and countless other patients. "

Ronaldo Tenório, 30, founder of HandTalk

Hand Talk, a mobile mobile app, provides sign language interpreters to the hearing impaired. 6 million sign language interpreters are performed each month.

A hearing impaired person walked into a bar. This is not the beginning of a joke, but a frustrating situation - unless the bar attendant happens to understand sign language communication. This is why we need Hand Talk? It converts voice input into sign language and displays it on the smartphone screen through an animated image.

Currently, Hand Talk only recognizes Portuguese and translates it into Brazilian sign language Libras (note: Ronaldo Tenório's hometown is Brazil). There are at least 10 million hearing impaired people in Brazil alone, and one million of them have already downloaded the Hand Talk mobile app.

The hearing impaired person only needs to hold a smart phone when communicating with ordinary people, and present the "Please speak and translate" screen of the Hand Talk application. Once the speaker's voice is received, an animated image Hugo begins translating it into a sign language.

Converting speech into gesture animation requires a lot of hard work, because every detail must be accurate, even as small as Hugo's facial expression, which also carries the meaning of sign language. Tenorio and his team train their programs with thousands of sample sentences and match them to 3D sign language animations. And, in the future, they will continue to push new improvements through application upgrades.

Tenorio plans to release different versions of the animated image in the Hand Talk app, allowing users to set their gender or ethnicity for Hugo. This expands the appeal and usability of the app, and there is an auxiliary virtual translator in the pocket.

Jagdish Chaturved, 32, clinical research leader at InnAccel

The doctor laughed and talked about the rough road to becoming an innovator.

This article is written for Jagdish Chaturved:

I invented a low-cost ear, nose, and throat imaging device ENT (note: ear, nose, throat English acronym), so I can proudly call myself an entrepreneur (note: entrepreneur English word entrepreneur top three The letters are also ENT)!

Of course, this is just a joke. I am an amateur impromptu comedian. I love acting, this is a way for me to relax, and I find that comedy can help me improve my observation and become keen.

It was the keen observation that helped me invent Entraview, which has helped 200,000 patients.

When I was an intern, I saw many farmers suffering from advanced throat cancer. I realized that only large cities have professional imaging inspection systems, not to mention expensive prices, so rural doctors can only rely on outdated mirrors and headlights. When I asked the boss: Why didn't anyone try to connect the endoscope to a small universal camera? The boss encouraged me to say, "Why don't you do it?"

The invention of Entaview is a rare learning process for me. At first I worked with a small design company, but we were too stubborn to pursue a universal, once-in-a-lifetime universal device. Until I quickly exhausted all the funds, the boss suggested that I go out and learn how to invent.

The Stanford-India Biodesign program is designed to teach Indian doctors and engineers how to invent. Learning their invention process made me realize that I had a problem and eventually contributed to my cooperation with Medtronic.

We intend to simplify and focus on the ear problem. Although this is not the original grand goal, it is the fastest way to simplify and market the equipment, and now this simplified inspection device can be further improved.

Since then, I have submitted the invention of 18 medical devices and are currently the clinical research leader of the medical technology incubator InnAccel. I will help multiple startups and continue to practice medicine to maintain close contact with clinical needs.

75% of Indian medical technology relies on imports. We have great inventors, but often make the same mistakes without understanding the real innovation process, and the first step in innovation is to find a good team.