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For the 15th year, Popular Science launched a nationwide search to seek the 10 most innovative young minds in science and engineering. These researchers bring creative solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems. Here, we celebrate their game-changing ideas.
John Gunnar Carlsson
Reroutes the World with Geometry
FIELD
Industrial and Systems Engineering
AGE 33
INSTITUTION
University of Southern California
WHILE THE SAN FRANCISCO 49ers' new 68,000-seat stadium was under construction, a team executive went to Stanford University with a stumper: We want to deliver hot dogs to fans' seats. So how many servers should we hire? What routes should they take? How fast will the food arrive? The answer: "Talk to John Gunnar Carlsson." Carlsson, who's since moved to USC, has made a specialty of solving computationally tough questions-from how to route 1,000 delivery trucks most efficiently to getting airplane parts to the correct hangars around the world in the right order-using the power of math.
These types of distribution problems are legendary in their difficulty. Solving them is so demanding that strategists tend to fall back on trial-and-error solutions. But Carlsson formulated an elegant new approach that uses geometry to reframe the question. So a problem such as, In what order should a parcel service make drop-offs? becomes, What shapes should the delivery area be divided into, and what should the perimeters be? Then couriers can be directed according to the most efficient solution.
Asking geometrical rather than conceptual questions is a tactic that can be applied to all kinds of scenarios. So it's not surprising that Boeing, Oracle, and even the U.S. Air Force have tapped Carlsson to solve their most complex challenges.
Liangfang Zhang
DISGUISES NANODRUGS FOR EFFECTIVE TREATMENT
FIELD
Nanomedicine + Chemical Engineering
AGE 36
INSTITUTION
University of California, San Diego
TINY, MAN-MADE SPHERES called nanoparticles can shuttle medicines to diseased tissues with incredible precision. But they all face a common challenge: The immune system sees the virus-size particles as threats, and eats them before they can reach their target. Previously, researchers had tried to dupe the immune system, with only limited success. So Liangfang Zhang borrowed a design from nature. He removed the membrane from a red blood cell and snipped it into pieces that he used to...