• Breakthrough Technologies

    1. Nano-Architecture
    Breakthrough: Materials whose structures can be precisely tailored so they are strong yet flexible and extremely light.
    Why It Matters: Lighter structural materials would be more energy-efficient and versatile.
    Key Players: 
    §  Julia Greer, Caltech
    §  William Carter, HRL Laboratories
    §  Nicholas Fang, MIT
    §Christopher Spadaccini, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory                   
                                      
    2. Magic Leap
    Breakthrough: A device that can make virtual objects appear in real life.
    Why It Matters: The technology ­ could open new opportunities for the film, gaming, travel, and telecommunications industries.
    Key Players:
    §  Magic Leap
    §  Microsoft
                                                   
    3. Car-to-Car Communication
    Breakthrough: Cars that can talk to each other to avoid crashes.
    Why It Matters: More than a ­million people are killed on roads worldwide every year.
    Key Players:
    §  General Motors
    §  University of Michigan
    §  National Highway Traffic Safety Administration


    4. Project Loon
    Breakthrough: A reliable and cost-effective way to beam Internet service from the sky to places lacking it.
    Why It Matters: Internet access could expand educational and economic opportunities for the 4.3 billion people who are offline.
    Key Players:
    §  Google
    §  Facebook
                                           
    5. Liquid Biopsy
    Breakthrough: A blood test to catch cancer early.
    Why It Matters: Cancer kills some eight million people a year around the world.
    Key Players: 
    §  Dennis Lo, Chinese University of Hong Kong
    §  Illumina
    §  Bert Vogelstein, Johns Hopkins 
                                          
    6. Megascale Desalination
    Breakthrough: Demonstrating that seawater desalination can cost-effectively provide a substantial portion of a nation’s water supply.
    Why It Matters: The world’s supplies of fresh water are inadequate to meet the needs of a growing population.
    Key Players:
    §  IDE Technologies
    §  Poseidon Water
    §  Desalitech
    §  Evoqua
                                           
    7. Apple Pay
    Breakthrough: A service that makes it practical to use your smartphone as a wallet in everyday situations.
    Why It Matters: Credit card fraud damages the economy by raising the costs of goods and services.
    Key Players:
    §  Apple
    §  Visa
    §  MasterCard
    §  Google
                                                 
    8. Brain Organoids
    Breakthrough: Three-dimensional clusters of living neurons that can be grown in a lab from human stem cells.
    Why It Matters: Researchers need new ways of understanding brain disorders and testing possible treatments.
    Key Players: 
    §  Madeline Lancaster and Jürgen Knoblich, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology
    §  Rudolph Tanzi and Doo Yeon Kim, Massachusetts General Hospital
                                             
    9. Supercharged Photosynthesis
    Breakthrough: Engineering rice plants to extract energy from sunlight far more efficiently than they do now.
    Why It Matters: Crop yields aren’t increasing fast enough to keep up with demand from a growing population.
    Key Players: 
    §  Paul Quick, International Rice Research Institute
    §  Daniel Voytas, University of Minnesota
    §  Julian Hibberd, University of Cambridge
    §  Susanne von Caemmerer, Australian National University
                                         
    10. Internet of DNA
    Breakthrough: Technical standards that let DNA databases communicate.
    Why It Matters: Your medical treatment could benefit from the experiences of millions of others.
    Key Players: 
    §  Global Alliance for Genomics and Health
    §  Google
    §  Personal Genome Project

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