Immune Engineering
Genetically engineered immune cells are saving the lives of cancer patients. That may be just the start. Breakthrough Killer T cells programmed to wipe out cancer. Why It Matters Cancer, multiple sclerosis, and HIV could all be treated by engineering the immune system.
Key Players in Immune Therapies
- Cellectis
- Juno Therapeutics
- Novartis
Precise Gene Editing in Plants
CRISPR offers an easy, exact way to alter genes to create traits such as disease resistance and drought tolerance. Breakthrough The ability to cheaply and precisely edit plant genomes without leaving foreign DNA behind. Why It Matters We need to increase agricultural productivity to feed the world’s growing population, which is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050.
Key Players in Engineering Crops
- The Sainsbury Laboratory and John Innes Centre, Norwich, U.K.
- Seoul National University
- University of Minnesota
- Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Beijing
Conversational Interfaces
Powerful speech technology from China’s leading Internet company makes it much easier to use a smartphone. Breakthrough Combining voice recognition and natural language understanding to create effective speech interfaces for the world’s largest Internet market.Why It Matters It can be time-consuming and frustrating to interact with computers by typing.
Key Players in Voice Recognition and Language Processing
- Baidu
- Google
- Apple
- Nuance
- Facebook
Reusable Rockets
Rockets typically are destroyed on their maiden voyage. But now they can make an upright landing and be refueled for another trip, setting the stage for a new era in spaceflight.
Breakthrough Rockets that can launch payloads into orbit and then land safely.
Why It Matters Lowering the cost of flight would open the door to many new endeavors in space.
Key Players in the New Space Industry
- SpaceX
- Blue Origin
- United Launch Alliance
Robots That Teach Each Other
What if robots could figure out more things on their own and share that knowledge among themselves?
Breakthrough Robots that learn tasks and send that knowledge to the cloud for other robots to pick up later.Why It Matters Progress in robotics could accelerate dramatically if each type of machine didn’t have to be programmed separately.
Key Players in Advanced Robotics
- Ashutosh Saxena, Brain of Things
- Stefanie Tellex, Brown University
- Pieter Abbeel, Ken Goldberg, and Sergey Levine, University of California, Berkeley
- Jan Peters, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany
DNA App Store
An online store for information about your genes will make it cheap and easy to learn more about your health risks and predispositions.
Breakthrough A new business model for DNA sequencing that will make genetic information widely accessible online. Why It Matters Your genome determines a great deal about you, including your likelihood of getting certain diseases.
Key Players in Consumer Genomics
- Helix
- Illumina
- Veritas Genetics
Solar City’s Giga-factory
A $750 million solar facility in Buffalo will produce a gigawatt of high-efficiency solar panels per year and make the technology far more attractive to homeowners.
Breakthrough Highly efficient solar panels made using a simplified, low-cost manufacturing process.
Why It Matters The solar industry needs cheaper and more efficient technology to be more competitive with fossil fuels.
Key Players in Photostatic
- Solar City
- Sun Power
- Panasonic
Slack
A service built for the era of mobile phones and short text messages is changing the workplace. Breakthrough Easy-to-use communication software that is supplanting e-mail as a method of getting work done. Why It Matters In many kinds of workplaces, the “water cooler” effect that lets people overhear their colleagues’ conversations can enhance productivity.
Key Players in Communication Software
- Slack
- Quip
- Hip-chat
- Microsoft
Tesla Autopilot
The electric-vehicle maker sent its cars a software update that suddenly made autonomous driving a reality. Breakthrough A car that drives itself safely in a variety of conditions.
Why It Matters Car crashes caused by human error kill thousands of people a day worldwide.
Key Players in Autonomous Driving
- Ford Motor
- General Motors
- Google
- Nissan
- Mercedes
- Tesla Motors
- Toyota
- Uber
- Volvo
Power from the Air
Internet devices powered by Wi-Fi and other telecommunications signals will make small computers and sensors more pervasive.v Breakthrough Wireless gadgets that re-purpose nearby radio signals, such as Wi-Fi, to power themselves and communicate.
Why It Matters Freeing Internet-connected devices from the constraints of batteries and power cords will open up many new uses.
Key Players in Harvesting Radio Waves
- University of Washington
- Texas Instruments
- University of Massachusetts, Amherst
