Courtesy of Barry Bruce
Growing Electricity
Barry Bruce, 50
Biochemist, University of Tennessee
Everyone agrees that we need new ways to meet the energy demands of the future, but there's little consensus on how to do it. Nuclear fission? Cleaner coal? Bio-diesel? Bruce is one of a small handful of researchers suggesting an entirely different road. Nature has its own incredibly efficient way of producing power from the sun--photosynthesis--so why not put it to work? "Essentially, you grow a power plant in a field or in a fermenter," says Bruce
© Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik
Quantum Teleportation
Ignacio Cirac, 41
Physicist, Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics
No, we aren't quite to the point of "beam me up, Scottie," but last October, Cirac teleported stuff in his lab. The "stuff" in question was information (more technically, a "quantum state"), and Cirac managed to instantly transfer it across a distance of half a meter without it touching anything in between.
Fighting Poverty Efficiently
Esther Duflo, 34
Economist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
While politicians tend to espouse solutions like "more aid" or "more trade," entrenched poverty is a great lingering economic mystery. Duflo designs studies to figure out which kind of aid projects work, and which don't. She was among the first development economists to evaluate aid projects using randomized trials, long the gold standard in scientific testing.
Courtesy of Kevin Eggan
P.C. Stem Cells
Kevin Eggan, 32
Cellular Biologist, HarvardUniversity
Eggan is leading the way to a world where stem cells--which have tremendous medical promise because of their potential to replace any damaged cell in the body--could be made without destroying embryos. Eggan is also becoming one of science's more outspoken voices, defending the necessity of pursuing embryonic cell research through all available means as a way of understanding scourges like diabetes and Lou Gehrig's disease
