28 MIT Trailblazers Celebrated in Forbes 30 Under 30 List

CassVita has invented a patent-pending biotechnology for increasing the shelf life of cassava, a woody shrub, thereby raising the incomes of over 1,000 smallholder farmers. 

Together with cofounder Mariah Olson and other partners, Bent built a free, peer-to-peer tutoring web app that helps more than 27,000 learners from 150 countries.

Chen’s work has uncovered that women are twice as likely as men to develop depression but often have some different symptoms. She is creating the first female-specific antidepressants.

Cheng cofounded Flo Materials to commercialize a new class of recyclable polymers to enable sustainable plastics manufacturing. The company is working to scale its materials for use by eyewear frame manufacturers.

Das heads corporate development at Electric Hydrogen, which has devised next-gen electrolyzers and raised $200 million toward building an electrolysis plant to enable clean, abundant hydrogen.

The Koko product Full Sleep monitors and analyzes sleep patterns using radar technology without wearables or cameras. The product includes a sleep program and a sleep coach.

Guo develops new polymer materials for practical, sustainable purposes—for example, nanostructured hydrogel tablets that can rapidly disinfect water or turn salt water fresh.

Mantel’s carbon capture technology involves using molten borate salts to absorb carbon dioxide created in high-temperature environments such as boilers, kilns, and furnaces. The goal is to reduce industry emissions.

Jaddivada develops electric power systems at SmartGridz, which aims to increase access to reliable low-carbon electricity. She has devised power system simulation and automation software.    

Posh Technologies builds artificial intelligence chatbots for regional banks and other financial institutions to communicate with customers. The technology comes out of research Kashyap and McEachern conducted at MIT.

Koenecke’s work is aimed at correcting bias in underlying algorithms. She is an expert on racial disparities in speech recognition systems, showing they yield poorer results for Black users. 

As therapists increasingly get their income from multiple sources, their accounting has gotten more complicated. Li cofounded Heard in 2019 to help therapists manage back-office finances.

Foundation Alloy is commercializing a new class of metal materials that Lienhard says can be “fabricated with less time, less energy, and better outcomes than legacy materials.”

Gaia AI is applying artificial intelligence and robotics to make forests a viable carbon sequestration solution by helping landowners, project developers, and investors measure the carbon content of a forest with high accuracy.

Oladeji and Okonkwo cofounded Pastel with Abuzar Royesh to provide offline-enabled software tools for small businesses. Pastel operates in 40 countries.

Overwatch Data automates global risk detection for companies. Perumal previously researched cyberattacks on elections and used machine learning to track disinformation.

Rice, who will start a professorship at Yale in 2023, is on a hunt for undiscovered planets in the distant solar system using a new machine-learning algorithm.

Roques-Carmes designs nanostructures in which light’s properties are drastically modified. This could lead to more sensitive X-ray detectors and low-dose X-ray CT scanners.

Schwalbe-Koda is developing new, low-cost, sustainable materials by tasking large supercomputers with simulating formulas that have the highest probability of working. 

Renewvia designs, installs, owns, and operates commercial and community solar power systems across multiple continents. Selby is currently building solar-powered minigrids to bring electricity to thousands of refugees and to rural communities.

Vega and cofounder Corten Singer are building a “mouth mouse”: a smart oral splint that enables hands-free human-computer interaction—empowering people living with impaired hand control to live more independently.

Wang is working on wearable ultrasound technology that could monitor deep tissue vital signs in the human body. 

Integrated Biosciences has developed a platform to help identify potential drug targets by analyzing cellular stress responses. At MIT, Wong’s studies focus on discovering life-saving drugs, specifically antibiotics.

Yang creates microchips that are ecoresorbable and bioresorbable, eliminating electronic waste while still working at a high level. He’s also created a miniature implantable cooling technology in a biodegradable platform to give pain relief.

Zhao founded Mesophase to develop a surface coating to improve energy efficiency at power plants. When applied to power plant condensers, the coating can improve output by up to 7 percent.

Zong works with blind collaborators and study participants to design new interfaces for non-visual data. The systems he co-creates translate charts and graphs into keyboard-navigable structures that offer text descriptions of data.