America.gov-Innovation: Innovators

Egyptian American Wins Highest U.S. Science Honor

Daniel Gorelick — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:29:58 -0400

Mostafa El-Sayed receives the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest science award, for work on small compounds known as nanomaterials. “We're proud to honor a new generation of people who have strived for excellence, people whose discoveries have changed America and the world,” President Bush says.

Iranian-American Researcher Explores Technology Frontiers in U.S.

Steve Holgate — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:51:16 -0400

Computer displays that fit into contact lenses, machines that assemble themselves, tools that let a doctor see precisely which of your cells has cancer, and nanodevices that monitor your health and dispense medicines are just some of the projects that Iranian-American scientist Babak Parviz and his research team are pursuing.

Young Innovator Profile: Michael Wong

Amor Safi — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:19:59 -0400

Describing his idea to use gold to clean up toxic waste, Michael Wong says, “I admit it does sound crazy.” Wong plans to combine gold with palladium — an even more precious metal — to treat polluted groundwater beneath waste dumps and contaminated factories and military sites.

Young Innovator Profile: Luis von Ahn

Amor Safi — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:19:26 -0400

Luis von Ahn is teaming up with the Internet Archive, a digital library, to get computer users to help digitize old library books by, for example, typing out difficult-to-read words from scanned books when they apply for e-mail accounts. His “big goal,” von Ahn says, is to make computers able to do anything that people can do.

Young Innovator Profile: John Wherry

Amor Safi — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:18:56 -0400

John Wherry, an immunologist, is working to develop a vaccine that provides lifelong immunity against influenza. There’s no time to waste, given the threat of a global pandemic triggered by mutations in the deadly bird flu virus that have emerged in Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Young Innovator Profile: Maya del Valle

Helen I. Rouce — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:18:28 -0400

At 155 centimeters and 50 kilograms, Maya del Valle may be petite, but she has the stage presence of a Gargantua. At a recent music, dance, and spoken-word event called “Race, Rap, and Redemption,” the 28-year-old poet commands the University of Southern California’s Bovard Auditorium with her thunderous voice and agile moves.

Young Innovator Profile: Geneva Wiki

Amor Safi — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:17:01 -0400

As deputy executive director, Wiki began talking to parents and community leaders about starting an early college high school on the reservation. Soon after getting one, tribal leaders and parents asked Wiki to be the school’s first director.

Young Innovator Profile: Beth Shapiro

Helen I. Rouce — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:16:25 -0400

When Beth Shapiro arrived at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar in 1999, she apprenticed herself to Alan Cooper, a pioneer in the brand-new field of ancient DNA. In the eight years since, Shapiro has risen to the top of the tiny, high-profile, overwhelmingly young community of ancient-DNA researchers.

Relearning Education

Helen Rouce — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:56:18 -0400

The role of innovators in a dynamic learning environment is especially significant not only for what they contribute, but also through the example they set for educators and trainers.

Young Innovator Profile: Christina Galitsky

Amor Safi — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:17:31 -0400

To devise an expedient method for the displaced of war-torn Darfur to cook their meals in 2005, Galitsky and physicist Ashok Gadgil, an LBNL senior scientist, proposed a solution: a highly energy-efficient and portable cookstove, one that, Galitsky says, would “sharply reduce the need for refugees to leave the camps.”

Innovators Help Reshape Reality

Ralph Dannheisser — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 14:13:05 -0400

Benjamin Franklin Viewed Invention as Form of Public Service

Peter Sisler — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 12:04:46 -0400

U.S. Founding Fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams all made contributions of a practical kind to the nascent American society, but it was Benjamin Franklin who embodied the inventiveness and sheer creative energy that would mark the American character. Franklin (1706-1790) was a self-made man who rose to international prominence in equal parts as inventor, scientist, revolutionary and statesman. The remarkable course of Franklin’s life, from his humble upbringing as the 10th son of a Puritan soapmaker in Colonial New England to his place as the era’s most celebrated scientist and diplomat, revealed quite a bit about the opportunity and promise for advancement the young American nation offered its enterprising sons (and, a bit later, also its daughters).

Dozens of Countries Sign Up for Global Entrepreneurship Week 2008

Elizabeth Kelleher — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:58:49 -0400

Economic leaders in other countries recognize that entrepreneurs are a sustaining force for U.S. economic growth. But they do not always understand that the environment that fosters U.S. entrepreneurs as they start businesses includes more than bankruptcy laws to protect a person’s assets if his or her business fails. The environment also includes an attitude that sees failure as a necessary part of the education of a successful leader. Ideas about entrepreneurship, such as the importance of failure, will be discussed worldwide during Global Entrepreneurship Week, scheduled for November 17-23, 2008.

Arsenic Filter for Water Offers Hope to Millions

Jeffrey Thomas — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:54:03 -0400

The winner of a prestigious engineering prize is working hard to ensure that needy communities around the world benefit from his invention, which removes arsenic and other impurities from water drawn from tube wells. Abul Hussam, a chemistry professor at George Mason University in Virginia, has devoted most of the $1 million he was awarded as winner of the 2007 Grainger Challenge Prize to distributing his inexpensive water filtration system to the poor in countries such as his native Bangladesh, where between 77 million and 95 million people are drinking water contaminated with arsenic.