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AND PIONEERS WHO ARE TRANSFORMING THE WORLD
T H RO U G H T E C H N O LO GY

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 INTERNATIONAL EDITION
DECEMBER 24, 2021 _ VOL.177 _ NO.22

TECH N O L O G Y
16 24 34
America’s Medical
Marvels
Planet
Protectors
Paradigm
Shifters
Greatest Pushing the
technological
Innovators helping to
counter climate change
People who are
using technology
Disruptors boundaries of
health care
and environmental
challenges
to change the
cultural conversation

20 30 38
Introducing Newsweek’s inaugural
list of 50 visionaries, innovators
and pioneers who are transforming Mind Hall of Artistic
the world through technology. Blowers Famers Advocates
Cutting-edge Visionaries whose Working to ensure
breakthroughs that career-long actions inclusion and
are just so cool or have had far- equity in the creator
out there reaching impact economy

42
Enterprising
Idealists
Using leading-edge
technology to
solve social and
community challenges
MEDICAL HELP
Moxi is a robot
created to take over
many of the routine
tasks—like delivering
48
lab samples and
medicines—often Fun &
assigned to nurses,
freeing them to
Gamers
care for patients. Playful technology
that’s pushing the edge
of what’s possible

52
Budding
Disruptors
Promising innovators
on the verge of
major breakthroughs
D I L I G E NT RO BOTI C S

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NEWSWEEK.COM

1

Monozukuri gives Japan its competitive edge
Made world famous by Toyota, mono-
zukuri is a concept found at the core
of all Japanese manufacturers, from
those making cars to those making
cardboard boxes. While monozukuri
focuses on high-quality, perfection,
and fine attention to detail, it also
entails the constant pursuit of inno-
vation guided by a response to cus-
tomer, industrial and societal needs.
“After WWII, the Japanese
economy grew exponentially and
Japanese firms focused on develop-
ing their monozukuri, which conse-
quently enhanced Japan’s industrial
sector as a whole,” explains Akiyoshi
Kitamura, president of PACRAFT, a
renowned manufacturer of filling
and packaging machinery. “Japanese
manufacturers during that period
really challenged themselves. One as-
pect of the Japanese population that
drove this sector to what it is today
was the high demand of consumers
and the monozukuri craftsmanship
required to fulfil these demands.”
For Takao Morizane, president of
Misumaru Sangyo – a leader in in-
dustrial packaging that is also behind
Woodtique, an ultra-thin real wood
Thinking outside the box to provide
high-quality recyclable packaging
As e-commerce rises and more sustainable packaging is required, TOMOKU has innovated
its manufacturing process and expanded overseas to meet growing global demand.
“Whenever we decide
to set up new factories,
we try to step up our
unique processes so
we can assure our
productivity and quality.
This helps us keep our
competitive edge.”
Mitsuo Nakahashi,
President & COO,
Tomoku Co., Ltd.
veneer for walls, ceilings and other
surfaces – monozukuri is “the accu-
mulation of improvements in quality,
usage and use in the right direction,
from the user’s point of view”.
“As the owner of this business,
I believe that we should continue
to innovate our products and our
business without interruption,” he
adds. “While we continue to increase
the value of our improvements for
the domestic market, there are not
enough improvements for the global
market. We have to keep on inno-
vating this company and we have
to take on new technologies. One
example of this is our Woodtique.”
Indeed, for those in the packag-
ing industry nowadays, customer
demands and societal needs are very
much focused on sustainability and
environmental concerns, which has
guided innovation and product devel-
opment at cardboard manufacturer
TOMOKU, a company developing
packaging technology aimed at re-
ducing waste in the fast-growing
online shopping industry.
“One key point is how we bring
ourselves to the end user and how
View of Vietnam factory
With its unique business strategy
across three distinct business seg-
ments – cardboard manufacturing,
housebuilding, and logistics – TO-
MOKU is a company with diverse
operations and interests. Thinking
outside of the box, therefore, comes
naturally to the organization, par-
ticularly when you consider one of
its main product lines is the humble
box itself; a product which has
engendered a surprising amount
of innovation over the years.
“The cardboard box is a product
that, when looking at it, you can’t
really tell in which country in the
world it has been made, or which
we can fit their needs. Most shop-
ping is done online, and so we are
thinking about making some propos-
als to fit user needs,” explains com-
pany president, Mitsuo Nakahashi.
“Often when online shopping, you
receive a huge box, but the contents
of it are small, and that’s just a waste
of paper. Thus, we are thinking of so-
lutions to this problem, like using the
optimal amount and suitable shape
of packaging for each delivery. Given
the high recycle rate of cardboard
in Japan, it can be recycled even
if the paper fibers become shorter
and thinner. This technology will
bring high-cost effectiveness and is
environmentally friendly, and it will
become an alternative to many other
kinds of containers. We have a 95%
recycle rate for our cardboard.”
Innovation is also at the core of
Nippon Closures, a leading manufac-
turer of plastic and metal closures
for food, beverage, medical, home
and chemical products. “We have al-
ways believed the essence of mono-
zukuri is meeting customer needs, no
matter what,” says president Hisashi
Nakajima. Mr. Nakajima is acutely
company makes it,” says Mitsuo
Nakahashi, President of TOMOKU.
“Yet at TOMOKU we are really so-
phisticated with our manufacturing
process that we have designed. It
is unique to us, and we are now
bringing the ideas that we have
developed in Japan to other parts
of the world where we can manu-
facture at a reasonable cost, as well
as with excellent quality.”
A house designed by Sweden House
With more than 70 years manu-
facturing in Japan, the company
has expanded its production ca-
pacity in Vietnam – where it es-
tablished three new product lines
CONTENT BY THE WORLDFOLIO
aware of his company’s responsibili-
ties when it comes to sustainability
as a company engaged in plastic
manufacturing. “Personally, my goal
is to ensure that the continued use of
plastics does not destroy the planet
and to achieve a circular economy
for plastic closures.”
Monozukuri can be traced back
centuries to the samurai sword
making city of Seki, the birthplace
of Kai Corporation, a manufacturer
of blades and related products in
the cooking, beauty, grooming, and
medical fields that continues to intro-
duce cutting-edge innovation. “Crafts-
people try to pay attention to clients’
every request, and they manufacture
things according to the monozukuri
philosophy, which is based on creating
the option most tailored to custom-
ers’ needs. We want to carry this tra-
dition on,” says Kai president, Hiroaki
Endo. “Even when we are expanding
overseas, we try to stay true to the
essence of Japan and Japanese cul-
ture. We also try to take care of the
needs of local people in the countries
we are in; that is the core of wanting
to preserve the monozukuri process.”
TM450 installed in SBC, which
went into operation in September
in 2021 – as well as the United
States, introducing its unique pro-
duction technology cultivated do-
mestically to global markets. This
includes the TM450, a high-speed
corrugator which can produce
corrugated sheets at 450m per
minute. “We’ve already been look-
ing into the future, including try-
ing to automate while increasing
productivity and product quality,”
says Mr. Nakahashi. “As a result,
whenever we decide to set up new
factories, we try to step up our
unique processes so we can assure
our productivity and quality. This
helps us keep our competitive edge
and the reason why we set up all
the offices and channels globally.”
www.tomoku.co.jp/english/

Nippon Closures proves
there is no cap on innovation
The packaging manufacturer which specializes in closures and caps for products across the food and beverage
industries is collaborating with overseas partners to enhance innovation and break into new global markets.
“In order to produce
a product that we are
satisfied with, we keep
improving it.”
Hisashi Nakajima,
President,
Nippon Closures Co., Ltd.
When you think of a product on
the shelf of any super store, the
first thing you often imagine is
not about the product itself – or
its core contents – but how that
product looks and presents itself
from the outside: its packaging.
Indeed, packaging is integral to a
product’s brand and how the prod-
uct appeals to diverse consumer
tastes through the character, per-
sonality and functionality that it
provides. As it turns out, with
a culture that places the high-
est value on beauty, quality, and
function in the manufacturing pro-
cess through a long tradition for
monozukuri (fine craftsmanship),
the Japanese are unsurprisingly
masters of packaging solutions.
“The Japanese are always
aware of their ideal world and
strive for perfection in beauty
and function, without ever being
satisfied with the status quo,”
says Hisashi Nakajima, President
of Nippon Closures, which de-
velops, manufactures, and sells
plastic and metal closures and
caps for products across the food,
beverage, medical, sanitary, and
chemical industries. “In order to
produce a product that we are
satisfied with, we keep improving
it. We believe that is one of the
reasons Japanese brands have
such a good reputation, because
they strive for better functions
and constantly develop their tech-
nology to have an ideal product.”
The famous Japanese manu-
facturing philosophy mono-
zukuri has traditionally been
about craftsmanship quality,
fine attention to detail, and the
kaizen philosophy. Nowadays,
it is also about responding to
market demands and customer
requests, as well as providing
the solutions that customers
require, explains Mr. Nakajima.
“We have always believed that
the essence of monozukuri is to
meet the needs of the customer,
no matter what. In essence, we
never turn down a demand or
request from a customer in need,”
he says. “We communicate care-
fully with our customers to find
out what problems they are really
facing. We make it a point to first
understand the customer well and
then consider how we can help
this person in need when devel-
oping our products. To achieve
this, we always try to be cre-
ative, innovative and pursue the
most advanced technology. This
is something that has remained
unchanged since the inception of
our company and we are proud
to say that our attitude towards
ideal manufacturing has resulted
in the trust our customers have
placed in us over the years.”
Central to this philosophy is
the aspect of collaboration with
other like-minded companies in
order to enhance innovative ca-
pabilities and produce optimum
solutions. This is particularly so
when it comes to co-creation
amongst international partners
who can share knowledge, tech-
nology, and research that enables
the respective parties to break
into new overseas markets. In
2019, Nippon Closures signed a
cross-licensing agreement with
the American packaging firm
Aptar for the design, develop-
ment, and manufacture of teth-
ered caps, for instance.
“With regards to co-creation
and collaboration with over-
seas companies, our goal is
not necessarily to provide caps
at a lower price, nor is it to
pursue cost reduction or prof-
itability,” explains the Nippon
Closures president. “Rather, we
are thinking about how we can
take advantage of our existing
technologies and match them
well with overseas partners and
overseas closure manufactur-
ers to provide highly specialized
caps that meet the needs of
each market. An existing tech-
nology may open a market in
some other country. Or if it can
help solve social issues in that
country, that will be the great-
est motivation for our engineers
and staff members, which will
also lead to their growth. What
we pursue is not only profit but
also how much value we can
provide to society.”
CONTENT BY THE WORLDFOLIO
An example of this is how
Nippon Closures has adapted its
products to cater to changing
Japanese society, which today
has the oldest population in the
world with the longest average
life expectancy at 84, and more
than 33% of the population soon
expected to be over the age of 65.
“Since our establishment, we
have been seeking ways to reduce
the amount of force required to
open a cap,” says Mr. Nakajima.
“For example, the twist-off caps
used for jams and other products,
introduced from a foreign cap
manufacturer, initially required a
strong force to open. As a result
of various improvements, we’ve
succeeded in making a cap that
is easy for anyone to open.”
In 2017, the company orga-
nized an “idea marathon” in Singa-
pore to develop a set of caps and
bottles that are easy to open for
everyone including the elderly and
disabled. “Through this project to
develop a product by directly ex-
changing opinions with consum-
ers and major beverage brands,
we realized once again the impor-
tance of open innovation through
diversity, which led to the open-
ing of the FUTURE DESIGN LAB
as a base for development and
marketing in Singapore by Toyo
Seikan Group Holdings.”
As a business with a firm fo-
cus on such Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR), another
goal of Nippon Closures is to
overcome the problem of plas-
tics, says the company president.
“Personally, I have a great
dream and goal to ensure that
the continued use of plastics does
not destroy the planet and to
achieve a circular economy for
plastic closures. As a business, we
would like to contribute greatly to
the happiness of the people living
in any region, and not just pursue
profit. To this end, CSR and social
contribution are one of the main
goals of our growth strategy that
we are currently formulating.”
www.ncc-caps.co.jp/

“The structure of this
product may look
simple, but it is the fruit
of the Japanese spirit
of monozukuri.”
Takao Morizane, CEO,
Misumaru Sangyo Co., Ltd.
“When I saw this product in the
newspaper, I knew I had to try
it. I immediately made an ap-
pointment with the manufactur-
er,” recalls Mr. Takao Morizane,
CEO of the Misumaru Group,
upon first seeing Woodtique.
Mr. Morizane decided to visit
the manufacturer of Woodtique,
which is now part of the group,
and was so taken with the prod-
uct that he agreed to become its
sole worldwide distributor the
same day.
The product consists of very
thinly sliced wood boards attached
to a specially manufactured, non-
combustible paper substrate. The
structure of this product may look
simple, but it is the fruit of the
Japanese spirit of monozukuri,
which involves a wide range of
exclusive techniques such as sur-
face polishing, color adjustment
and the method of attaching the
product to the substrate.
This product is a condensed
form of the techniques that the
Japanese people have been using
since ancient times in order to
conserve wood. In Japan, wood
from thinning has been used for
centuries to make chopsticks,
boxes, etc., using every last bit
Woodtique: The wooden wallpaper that
provides a safe and comfortable living space
whilst also preserving the environment
aru, a manufacturer of industrial packaging materials, is celebrating its 50th
s year with a new business venture, Woodtique, a wallpaper and sheeting product
y the look and feel of natural wood.
of wood. In other words, it is a
technique that has been refined
in the pursuit of profit, in order
to produce more products from
less wood. Woodtique, however,
is a reversal of this idea, using as
Natural warm wood feelings
The Woodtique difference
little wood as possible to make
as much Woodtique as possible,
and protecting the environment.
Woodtique wallpaper can be
applied in exactly the same way
as any other wallpaper sur-
face and can just as easily be
pasted as any other wallpaper.
Because it is so easily applied
both amateur and professional
decorators alike can handle it
allowing for a smooth installa-
tion and overall cost reduction
– moreover, its compact size
means it requires only mini-
mal storage space. “The total
thickness of the panels is about
200-280 microns, which makes
them very flexible and allows
them to be bent along the grain
of the wood, something that
cannot be achieved with normal
wooden panels,” Mr. Morizane
states. Thanks to this charac-
teristic, Woodtique can be ap-
CONTENT BY THE WORLDFOLIO
plied to curved surfaces and A recent trend in Japan has
even sharp corners. been the use of Woodtique sheets
Another way of using Wood- in origami and lighting materials,
tique is to combine it with other as the company’s proprietary
materials to create new types of technology can reduce the to-
decor. For example, Woodtique tal thickness of wood sheets to
around 100 microns. At this level
of thinness, the wood can be
folded in any direction without
causing any cracks, making it as
easy to fold origami cranes as
any other type of origami, and,
because it transmits light, it can
be used as a lighting material
to create a unique atmosphere
where the grain of the wood and
the light combine.
“Woodtique is a new material
that will allow us to make the
most efficient use of wood as we
build a low-carbon society,” Mr.
A unique wallcovering Morizane confidently declares.
In addition to Woodtique, the
company has introduced a
digital printing machine, which
is still a rarity in the industry,
and is setting up an on-demand
production system for small-lot
photo printing. The company is
determined to reduce its impact
on the environment by produc-
Modern and trendsetting ing only what customers really
sheets can be attached to alu- need, in the quantities they re-
minium squares to make them ally need, a system that has been
lighter, stronger and more du- difficult for manufacturers to
rable than the original squares. establish until now. This will be
When Woodtique is applied to a combined with the company’s
plasterboard wall substrate, proprietary check valve
or to an aluminium technology to pro-
square, it uses less duce attractive
wood than a normal products such
wooden board or as compression
square, but it is also bags for clothes.
more durable and Finally, the
has a lower total company fully
cost. In addition to intends to fulfil
the obvious benefits its social respon-
of using less wood, this sibility as a leader
also increases durability in the industry by
and lowers the decora- Giftmate using recycled raw
tive expense. Even more drawstring bags materials wherever
surprisingly, Woodtique sheets are possible to reduce its environ-
ultra-thin and can be sewn. The mental impact.
company is currently developing
products such as wallets using
Woodtique sheets to take advan-
tage of this feature. www.misumaru.co.jp

The cutting-edge blade makers
forging a sustainable future
A company with a growing international reach, Kai Corporation is adapting to new
needs without losing sight of the blade-forging traditions it is rooted in.
Founded in 1908 in Seki, Kai
Corporation is a leading Japa-
nese manufacturer of blades and
related products in the cooking,
beauty, grooming, and medical
fields. The company boasts a
significant – and growing – in-
ternational presence.
Known as the ‘city of sword-
smiths’, Seki boasts a history
stretching back over eight cen-
turies as the home of forging
blades in Japan. It is, in the
words of Kai president Hiroaki
Endo (the great-grandson of the
firm’s founder, Saijiro Endo) “one
of the three most important cen-
ters for swordsmanship in the
world, together with Solingen
in Germany and Sheffield in the
United Kingdom”.
Kai embraces its rich local her-
itage, highlighting in its mission
statement a devotion to “passing
down the skill and spirit which
continue to flow in this land”. It’s
a commitment that goes hand in
hand with the company’s dedica-
tion to monozukuri – the drive for
perfection that underpins Japa-
nese manufacturing. “Crafts-
people try to pay attention to
clients’ every request, and they
manufacture things according
to the monozukuri philosophy,
which is based on creating the
option most tailored to custom-
ers’ needs,” Mr. Endo says. “We
want to carry this tradition on.”
Having started out by crafting
pocketknives, Kai began making
Medical equipment factory
Japan’s first replaceable razor
blade in 1932, and later became
the first company in the world
to create a disposable razor with
three blades. “This was a huge
milestone for our company, al-
lowing it to become well-known
and increase our global pres-
ence,” Mr. Endo says. “I consid-
er razors to be the DNA of the
company, because the founding
generations – the first, second
and third – focused on setting
new milestones in developing
this product. My generation, the
fourth, obviously wants to take
on new challenges when it comes
to this key product. That’s why, in
Michel BRAS kitchen knives
the context of the push for more
sustainable business models, I
decided to test the Paper Razor.”
Featuring a handle made of
water-resistant card stock, Kai’s
groundbreaking Paper Razor
uses 98% less plastic than be-
fore; its metal head and blade
are its only non-paper elements.
“Currently, it’s being trialed in
Japan only, but there has al-
ready been a lot of interest from
other countries, because people
are more conscientious of en-
vironmental issues,” Mr. Endo
says. “The next five to seven
years is really the key period
for us to become a sustainable
manufacturer. Starting with the
Paper Razor, we look forward
to expanding the spectrum of
services, business and products
in this area.”
In the mid-20th century, Mr.
Endo’s grandfather, Saijiro Endo
II, added other cutting tools to
Kai’s portfolio, such as kitchen
knives, scissors and nail clippers,
with the company today boasting
an extensive range of products for
cooking, beauty care and groom-
CONTENT BY THE WORLDFOLIO
ing. “Beauty and grooming – ra-
zors and nail clippers in particular
– and kitchenware – with knives,
peelers and scissors at the fore-
front – are our core business-to-
consumer sectors,” Mr. Endo says.
While Kai initially focused on
selling kitchen knives in Japan,
a turn-of-the-millennium boom
“We’re expanding our
reach globally while
Shun kitchen knives
staying true to Japan’s
essence.”
Hiroaki Endo,
President & COO,
Kai Corporation
Kong, Vietnam, South Korea,
India and France, Kai continues
Paper RazorTM to grow internationally. How-
ever, although Mr. Endo sees
in western interest in the coun- greater potential in its overseas
try’s culture and cuisine led the business, he stresses that the
company to introduce its suc-
cessful Shun brand of culinary
blades for the overseas market.
“People wanted the right tools to
prepare Japanese food, or wash-
oku, which was considered cool
and healthy,” Mr. Endo explains.
“Up to that point, the German
city of Solingen dominated the
cutlery market outside of Japan.
However, after we launched the Kershaw knife
Shun brand, we became a strong firm will never lose sight of its
international competitor.” roots. “Looking to Japan, as you
Kai is now also a manufacturer know, its population is aging, so
of medical blades, and in 2018 we obviously aren’t expecting
expanded its domestic medical an explosive market with good
blade factory in Oyana, as part of growth in the future,” he says.
its efforts to expand its output in “But while we are expanding
the field of surgical instruments. our reach outside Japan, I want
“When it comes to the medical to make sure we never forget
sector, there are good prospects our pride as a 100-year-old
in terms of the potential for profit Japanese company.”
and the high level of technology
required in manufacturing,” Mr.
Endo says. “That’s why we decided
to put emphasis on the medical
field when expanding our factory.”
Having so far expanded to
the US, Germany, China, Hong kai-group.com/global/en/
 CONTENT BY THE WORLDFOLIO

PACRAFT’S rebrand pointing to a more sustainable future

To mark its 61st anniversary, PACRAFT has undergone a noteworthy rebrand. Formerly Toyo Jidoki, PACRAFT wanted
to integrate a new image which reflected a mindset and culture for future growth both inside and outside the company.
“Moving forward, we see
a trend of reduced plastic
product use worldwide
and using materials
that are more easily
recyclable.”
Akiyoshi Kitamura,
President,
PACRAFT Co., Ltd.
Since its inception in 1960, PA-
CRAFT has strived to apply ad-
vanced technologies to build pouch
fill/sealing machines and automated
systems to meet the diverse needs of
its customers, all while never losing
sight of one of its core philosophies:
once a client, always a client.
adds IoT systems to manage a target to be the best-known
data, to keep consistent produc- supplier of pouch packaging
tion and engineer service his- equipment worldwide, PACRAFT
tory on customer IoT systems incorporates important techno-
as well as connectivity between logical advances with an em-
the machines and the factory, so phasis on sustainability while
that data from all equipment
Pouch packaging can be compiled and that the
PACRAFT’s customers have site is fully connected.
become familiarized with look- PACRAFT is also fully fixated
ing to the company to solve on a sustainable future for every-
their problems and produce one. The company boasts pouch
creative solutions. PACRAFT’s refills that are energy efficient
unmatched attention to and use a fraction of the
detail assures custom- resources required
ers that its durable by rigid contain-
and high-perform- ers. PACRAFT’s
ing equipment can product portfolio
be used for the and current R+D
maximum length reflect one of its Pack Expo
of time. most important fo- always following the company’s
One increasingly cuses: sustainability core mantra: the sale of a prod-
more desired need for the environment. uct marks the start of a long
expressed by PA- Rebranding the relationship with the customer.
CRAFT’s range of Automation controls company has be-
customers is IoT compatibility. come a preface for what lies
PACRAFT is therefore always ahead for this forward-thinking
happy to deliver. The company and ambitious company. With https://pacraft-global.com/en

Innovation to put smiles on faces

Tufting machine
Behind every great smile is a
great toothbrush, and people
from all walks of life are focus-
ing on their dental hygiene more
than ever. Yamato Esulon offers
its partners the opportunity to
sell the most innovative dental
products with the assurances
and know-how that 90 years of
experience in the business brings.
As an OEM, the company
prides itself on its ability to
tailor its industry-standard ma-
chinery to meet the needs of its
business partners, working to
strict deadlines, and preventing
leaks of company information.
As President Toshiharu Matsu-
shita says: “Our ability to deliver
on our promises is what builds
trust with our customers.”
This trust has enabled Yam-
ato Esulon to produce tooth-
brushes for electronic giants
such as Panasonic, and the
company is proud of its his-
tory of renewed orders from
customers across the globe.
Indeed, Yamato Esulon has
expanded its production to
a factory in Thailand, where
its Japanese employees work
with the local team to ensure
its high standards are main-
tained whilst adapting to the
local market.
As a small producer, the com-
pany understands its ability to
orcoa (PCR test device)
innovate is key to its growth,
and this is best illustrated by
its expansion into the develop-
ment of a PCR test for gingivi-
tis. Six years of development
with a specialist manufacturer
has enabled Yamato Esulon to
create a product which allows
dentists themselves to analyze
their patients’ oral health in 45
minutes, rather than sending
the samples to specialist labo-
ratories and waiting for results.
Continuing this diversifica-
tion, the company is developing
its unique tufting head part for
toothbrushes, making the head
extremely streamlined, which
it plans to launch as its own
product rather than as an OEM.
www.yamato-esulon.co.jp/english
 */2%$/(',725ʝ,1ʝ&+,() _ Nancy Cooper

'(387< (',725ʝ,1ʝ&+,() Diane Harris

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EDITORIAL
SPECI A L ISSU 1 2 . 24. 2 021
SP CI ISSUE 12 .2 4 . 20 21

Editor, Newsweek International Alex Hudson

Deputy Editor, London Bureau Alfred Joyner
Associate News Director, London Marc Vargas
E lo n :
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(Sports), Kyle McGovern, Emma Nolan (Culture),
Hannah Osborne (Politics), Donica Phifer,
A M E R I C A’ S G R E A T E S T
Ramsen Shamon (Opinion),
Batya Ungar-Sargon (Opinion)
Associate Editor David Chiu
Copy Chief James Etherington-Smith A M E R I C A’ S G R E A T E S T
Deputy Copy Chief Dom Passantino
London Sub-Editor Hannah Partos F I F T Y V I S I O N A R I E S , I N N O VAT O R S
AND PIONEERS WHO ARE TRANSFORMING THE WORLD
Asia Editor at Large Danish Manzoor T H RO U G H T E C H N O LO GY F I F T Y V I S I O N A R I E S , I N N O VAT O R S
AND PIONEERS WHO ARE TRANSFORMING THE WORLD
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7
In Focus THE NEWS IN PICTURES
 WASHINGTON, D.C.

American
Champion
The casket of former Senator Bob Dole lies in state in the
Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on December 9. Dole, a veteran
who was severely injured in World War II, was a Republican
senator from Kansas from 1969 to 1996. He was 98 when
he died December 5. Dole ran for president three times and
A N D R E W H A R NI K /G E T T Y

became the Republican nominee for the presidency in 1996.

ANDREW HARNIK

De c e m be r 24, 2021 NeWSWeeK.cOm 9

10
In Focus

NEWSWEEK.COM
De c e m be r 24, 2021
C LO CK WI SE F ROM TO P L E FT: K I R I L L KUD RYAV TS EV/AFP/G E T T Y; J O H N M ACD OU GAL L /A FP/G ET T Y; J OSE P H P R E Z IO S O/AF P/GET T Y
 BAIKONUR, KAZAKHSTAN
Space Privilege
The Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft carrying
Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin,
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his
production assistant Yozo Hirano blasts off
to the International Space Station from the
Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome on
December 8. Maezawa, according to reports,
has also booked a spot on an Elon Musk
spacecraft that could orbit the moon in 2023.
→ KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV
NEWRY, MAINE
Santa Slalom
Skiers and snowboarders head
downhill in the annual Santa Ski
Run on Santa Sunday at Sunday
River Resort on December 5.
Over 200 folks took part in
the event that helped raise funds
for the nonprofit group, River
Fund Maine, which supports
young people in the area.
→ JOSEPH PREZIOSO
BERLIN
Power Exchange
New German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
gives flowers to his predecessor
Angela Merkel after she handed
over the office at the Chancellery
in Berlin on December 8.
Members of the parliament elected
Scholz, ushering in a new political
era with the center-left in charge
of the German government.
→ JOHN MACDOUGALL
NEWSWEEK.COM 11
 NASA HELICOPTER

ROBO NURSES

DEMOCRATIZING AI

BIOSYNTHETIC INDIGO

CARBON CAPTURE

BRAIN PROSTHETIC

DNA PRINTERS

12 NEWSWEEK.COM DE C E M BE R 24, 2021

 OPEN SOURCE GAMING

DIGITAL FASHION

AI-INFORMED FARMING

SAFER ELECTIONS
ROBOT SWARMS

CROWDSOURCED DATA

TECH ECOSYSTEM

SOCIAL JUSTICE

NFT MARKETPLACE
INTRODUCING
NEWSWEEK’S
INAUGURAL LIST OF
50 Visionaries,
Innovators & Pioneers
CRYPTOGRAPHY TOOLS
WHO ARE TRANSFORMING
THE WORLD THROUGH
TECHNOLOGY
GETTY
 t first glance, Lizzo, the singer, rapper and
style icon, might not seem to have a lot in
common with Katalin Karikó, the molecular
biologist whose research on mRNA technology enabled rapid
development of the COVID-19 vaccine. Nor perhaps does Bela
Bajaria, the Netflix executive whose global content strategy
led to the streaming phenomenon Squid Game, seem naturally
connected to scientist Tammy Hsu, who is making eco-friendly
blue jeans, or engineer Amay Bandodkar, who is developing
batteries powered by human sweat. Elon Musk, the tech
entrepreneur who’s doing everything from pioneering reusable
rockets that send well-heeled tourists into space to fostering
AI enhancements to the brain, and Darnella Frazier, the young
woman who ignited a worldwide social justice movement
with her cellphone? Not what you’d call an intuitive pairing.

Yet all of these people, and the other
43 visionaries and innovators on
Newsweek’s inaugural list of Greatest
Disruptors share this critical quality:
They are agents of change who are
using technology in ways that will
profoundly impact our lives—mostly
or wholly for the better.
The Oxford Dictionary defines
“disruption” as radical change to an
existing industry or market due to
technological innovation. The work
being done by our 50 inductees in
the 2021 Disruptors class certain-
ly fits that description. What truly
sets these pioneers apart, however,
is their humanity. Whereas disrup-
tion generally, by this or any other
definition, isn’t necessarily spurred
by good intention and may, in some
cases, have unanticipated negative
repercussions, the disruptors on our
list are largely driven by a desire to
contribute to a greater good, often in-
spired by personal experience—and,
so far at least, their work seems on a
path to fulfill that promise.
Consider neuroscientist Aadeel
Akhtar, who was inspired to develop
affordable human-like bionic limbs
by seeing a little girl missing a leg us-
ing a tree branch as a crutch during a
family trip to Pakistan when he was 7
years old. Or energy entrepreneur Bill
Gross, whose interest in carbon emis-
sions capture was sparked by memo-
ries of his family living through the
1973 oil embargo, getting by on $5 of

14 NEWSWEEK.COM DE C E M BE R 24, 2021

rationed gas every other day. Or com-
puter scientist Rana el Kaliouby, a
pioneer in emotion AI, who was mo- H
Here is a partial list of the many experts who
tivated in her work teaching comput- offered nominations or helpful insights over
ers to understand human emotion, by the course of this project. Newsweek is grateful
her own feelings of loneliness after
for their wise counsel and our list is better for it.
moving from Cairo to Cambridge,
Massachusetts, for her Ph.D. Or NYU
Langone surgeon Robert Montgom-
ery, whose own need for a transplant ScottAnthony MichaelHyter
Senior Partner, President, CEO,
due to a rare, progressive disease of
Innosight The Executive
the heart muscle helps inform his Leadership Council
work—including his recent, first-of- ShannonAustin
its-kind transplant of a pig kidney Founder, Work in 6WHSKDQLH/DIɿQ
into a human being. Progress Consulting Executive Director
of Creative Affairs
In the six months that Newsweek
ErikBrynjolfsson for Wade Davis
has been working on the Greatest Director, Stanford
Disruptors initiative, we have contin- Digital Economy Lab; JosephLeDoux
ually been fascinated and inspired as Professor, Stanford Professor of
we learned more about the motiva- Institute for Neural Science and
Human-Centered AI Psychiatry at NYU
tions driving truly disruptive achieve-
ment and the humanity behind the JoshuaGans RitaMcGrath
razzle dazzle, sometimes sci-fi-like Professor of Professor, Columbia
gee-whizzery of the cutting-edge Strategic Management, Business School
technology. We hope you find the ƠBy 'LDQH+DUULV University of Toronto
BernardMeyerson
stories and achievements of these 50 Deputy Editor in Chief
MarkGreeven Chief Innovation
Great Disruptors as moving and as and )UHG*XWHUO Professor of Innovation Officer Emeritus, IBM
awe-inspiring as we do. Special Projects Editor and Strategy,
International Institute AdamPiore
for Management Development Science journalist;
author, The Body Builders:
How We Created JohnHall Inside the Science of
the 2021 Disruptors List: Co-founder, the Engineered Human
Calendar.com
or the initial list, Newsweek solicited nominations from CamilaRusso
more than 100 experts and change makers in a variety ArlanHamilton Founder, The Defiant
RIɿHOGVDVZHOODVRXUVWDII7KH'LVUXSWRUVUHVHDUFK Founder & Managing
team, led by Newsweek6HQLRU5HSRUWHU.HUUL$QQH5HQ]XOOL Partner, Backstage JoshSuskewicz
and Newsweek )HOORZ0HJKDQ*XQQDOVRFRPEHGUHVHDUFK Capital Partner, Innosight
E\XQLYHUVLWLHVWHFKLQFXEDWRUVYHQWXUHFDSLWDOɿUPVIXWXULVWV
and other tech experts and organizations, to identify additional FranHauser NoraD.Volkow
SURPLVLQJZRUNWKDWPHWRXUGHɿQLWLRQRIGLVUXSWLRQ7REHFRQ- Startup investor, Director, National
VLGHUHGFDQGLGDWHVKDGWREHHPSOR\LQJWHFKQRORJ\LQDZD\WKDW author of The Myth of Institute on Drug
LVGULYLQJIXQGDPHQWDOWUDQVIRUPDWLYHFKDQJHLQEXVLQHVVKHDOWK the Nice Girl: Abuse, National
WKHHQYLURQPHQWFXOWXUHRUVRFLHW\ŜW\SLFDOO\ZLWKPHDVXUDEOH Achieving a Career You Institutes of Health
UHDOZRUOGUHVXOWVŜRUKDYHFOHDUDQGGHPRQVWUDEOHSRWHQWLDOWR Love Without Becoming
GRVR2YHUVL[PRQWKVDVKRUWOLVWRIURXJKO\FDQGLGDWHVZDV a Person You Hate AmyWebb
FUHDWHGWKHQFXOOHGWRWKHɿQDOWKURXJKUHVHDUFKLQWHUYLHZV Founder, CEO, Future
DQGWKHMXGJPHQWRIWKH'LVUXSWRUVWHDPDQGNewsweek editors, LindaHill Today Institute
OHGE\'LDQH+DUULVNewsweek’s GHSXW\HGLWRULQFKLHIDQG)UHG Professor of Business
*XWHUOVSHFLDOSURMHFWVHGLWRUIRUPHUH[HFXWLYHHGLWRURI6FLHQWLɵF Administration, MaxwellWessel
AmericanDQGDXWKRURIThe Fate of the Species: Why the Human Harvard Business EVP and Chief Learning
Race May Cause Its Own Extinction and What We Can Do About It School Officer, SAP

NEWSWEEK.COM 15

An Affordable
Bionic Hand
AADEEL AKHTAR — FOUNDER AND CEO, PSYONIC
hen aadeel akhtar was
7 years old, he met a little
girl who changed his life.
His parents took him to see family
in Pakistan, where they’d been born,
and they were walking into a store
when he saw her. She was missing
her right leg. “That was actually the
first time I had met someone with
a limb difference,” he says. “She was
about my age, using a tree branch as
a crutch, living in poverty.”
He never learned her name, never
spoke to her or saw her again. But he
never forgot her. He got a Ph.D. in neu-
roscience, and now, at 34, is founder
and head of an Illinois company
called Psyonic. He and his team of
about 30 make prosthetic limbs that
are smart, durable, responsive to their
users’ needs and—this is key—afford-
able. In the U.S., Medicare says it will
cover the cost of Psyonic’s prosthetics,
and Akhtar says other insurers will
probably follow. It’s estimated that at
least 1.6 million Americans live with
the loss of a limb, and Akhtar says only
10 percent of those who needed bion-
16 NEWSWEEK.COM
PUSHING THE
TECHNOLOGICAL
BOUNDARIES
OF HEALTH CARE
ic limbs in the past could afford them.
Medicare’s approval should ultimately
increase that to 75 percent.
“We’re pushing the boundaries
of what’s possible, but also making
them accessible and leveling the
playing field for all those people
who couldn’t get access to this kind
of technology before,” Akhtar says.
Psyonic put its first commercial
product, called the Ability Hand, on
the market nationally in September.
In size and design, it resembles a nat-
ural hand, albeit with batteries and
electronics packed inside. Akhtar says
the fingers come close to mimicking
the movements of human fingers, and
they give instant feedback—the limb
vibrates against your skin when its
fingers meet resistance, signaling that
if you’re gripping something delicate
(say, an egg or your child’s hand) you
should stop squeezing. Electrodes in
the base of the hand sense when you
tighten existing muscles and use those
signals to make the fingers move.
Akhtar gathered input from mili-
tary veterans who tried out prototypes;
DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
 other testers had lost limbs in acci-
dents or to disease. “They were using
technology that hadn’t changed in,
like, several decades. And we wanted
to upgrade them to the 21st-century,”
he says. He’s worked for years with
Dan St. Pierre, a commercial diver
who lost his left hand in 2009. In a
video, St. Pierre, wearing the Ability
Hand, catches a water bottle tossed
his way. Akhtar also arm wrestles him,
and, of course, loses.
“I spent many years trying to find a
good prosthetic that worked and did
what I needed it to do, and I couldn’t
find it,” says St. Pierre.
Other prosthetics on the market
tend to be either rudimentary (a hook)
or expensive (up to $70,000). Akhtar
says the Ability Hand costs clinicians
$10,000 to $20,000, depending on the
user’s needs. The Psyonic team saved
money by making molds for parts with
3D printing. While much of the hand is
made from carbon fiber, many parts are
silicone or rubber, materials which are
both cheap and flexible. Users had com-
plained that earlier prostheses, made
of hard molded plastics, easily broke.
Eventually Akhtar would like to
make prosthetic legs and expand over-
seas. He says he can imagine, someday,
a surgically attached prosthetic—no
batteries needed because movements
would be controlled by the user’s
tendons. But for now, he says he’s en-
abling one person at a time.
“Our veterans, they’ve gone through
hell,” he says. “And to be able to give
them something back—that’s been
incredibly rewarding.” —ned potter

“W
We wanted to upgrade
[military veterrans]
SKOT W I E D M AN N

to the 21st-century.”

NEWSWEEK.COM 17
 SYNTHETIC
DNA AT A Dissolvable
COMMERCIAL Pacemaker
SCALE JOHN A. ROGERS — DIRECTOR,
QUERREY SIMPSON INSTITUTE
FOR BIOELECTRONICS,
EMILY LEPROUST — CO-FOUNDER, CEO, TWIST BIOSCIENCE NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

aking dna from scratch is typically expensive, prone to error For patients who need temporary
and not easily scalable. Twist has found a way to help automate and help regulating their heartbeat,

&/2 &.:,6()5207237:,67%,26&,(1&(&+5,667521*ʔ1257+:(67(51 81,9(56,7<,//8675$7,21%<$/(;),1(6285&(3+2726&2857(6< 2)'523/(7 7(

commercialize the process by creating a technology for writing synthetic such as those who’ve had open-
DNA onto tiny silicon chips, which can be manufactured cheaply and easily heart surgery, a heart attack or a
distributed to pharmaceutical companies and research labs. The technology drug overdose, Rogers and his team
has already had a big impact on public health: During the COVID-19 pan- created a new kind of implantable
demic, Twist created a synthetic version of SARS-CoV-2 that was used in tests. pacemaker—wireless, battery-free
Eventually, their synthetic DNA could also help identify specific cancers for and, best of all, dissolvable. After
targeted treatments and lead to ways of making spider silk at an industrial five to seven weeks, the pacemaker,
scale. This year, Twist launched Exome 2.0, a tool for bioscientists to analyze made of natural materials like sili-
genes responsible for rare diseases and genetic disorders. —m.g. cone and magnesium, is absorbed
by the body. Since patients don’t re-
quire surgery to remove the device,
they avoid the attendant risks of
Medicine Delivered By Mist infection, tissue damage and blood
clots. Rogers’ device gets its ener-
MADHAVI GAVINI, RATHI SRINIVAS — CO-FOUNDERS, DROPLETTE gy wirelessly from a small device
placed on the chest.
For people who suffer from epider- funding from the National Institutes The pacemaker is the second bio-
molysis bullosa, disorders that cause of Health, the two inventors decided degradable implant for Rogers—the
the skin to become fragile and blister, to broaden its applicability to more
first, developed in 2018, speeds the
applying topical treatments is a painful common skincare concerns, such as
ordeal. Madhavi Gavini and Rathi Sri- treating wrinkles and blemishes with
regeneration of damaged nerve tis-
nivas looked for a better way to deliver retinal, collagen and glycolic acid mist sue. Although both devices need fur-
medical help. Their solution: a hand- treatments. The pair say their device al- ther development and testing before
held device that acts like a nebulizer lows the skin to absorb larger molecules they can become commercial prod-
and can deliver treatments and pain than are typical in topical treatments. ucts, Rogers is confident that biode-
UHOLHYHUV YLD D VXSHUɿQH DQG SRZHUIXO The approach has garnered glowing
mist that penetrates deep into the skin. reviews in InStyle, Laptop Mag and
gradable electronics have a future in
Whil
While developing
d l i the th technology,
t h l with
ith otther publications. More than 1 million medical devices to monitor and treat
off its skincare treatment capsules been a range of conditions. —K.R.
so
old since it launched a year ago. The
paair is also working with researchers
from MIT, Tufts and Walter Reed Army
In
nstitute of Research on developing the
deevice, called Droplette, for a variety
off diseases including genetic disorders,
wounds and skin infections. NASA,
to
oo, has come calling, awarding them
a grant to test aspects of their tech on
th
he International Space Station. “They
ZHUH IDVFLQDWHGE\WKHʀXLGSK\VLFVWKDW
drrives our device,” says Srinivas. —K.R.

18 NEWSWEEK.COM
 M E D I C A L M A R V EL S

Robot Medical
Assistants
ANDREA THOMAZ, VIVIAN CHU
CO-FOUNDERS, DILIGENT ROBOTICS

To increase the amount of time nurses

and other medical staff have for patient
care, Andrea Thomaz and Vivian Chu
designed a robot, called Moxi, to tackle
menial tasks—such as delivering person-
al protective equipment and medicines,
carrying tests or lab samples, and picking
up or dropping off items to patients—
which can consume 30 percent of a shift.
The idea proved critical during the
pandemic, when staff were overwhelmed
with patients and had to impose pro-
tocols to lessen transmission risk. In a
single shift, Moxi can complete as many
as 75 different 10-minute tasks in a shift,
freeing hours of nursing staff time to care
for patients. Moxi is already used in sev-
eral Texas health care systems, recently
launched at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles,
COMMUNICATING and is currently integrating into a half

BY THINKING, NOT TALKING

THOMAS OXLEY — CEO, SYNCHRON
dozen other health care systems. “Instead
of having robots that take jobs away
from humans,” says Chu, “we wanted to
create robots that eased the stress and
workload of one of the most demanding
jobs in society, nursing.” —K.R.

n his practice as an interventional neurologist, Dr. Oxley has

treated paralyzed stroke patients who were unable to commu-
nicate with loved ones and carers. A few years ago, he began working
on the idea of bypassing speech and connecting his patients’ brains
directly to a computer, so they could communicate merely by think-
)520723,//8675$7,21%<%5,7 763(1&(5',/,*(1752%27,&6

ing. As founding CEO of Synchron, he helped develop a tiny device,

called a Stentrode, that a surgeon snakes into the brain through
the blood vessels, where it acts as a brain-computer interface.
Last year, two paralyzed patients in Australia used Stentrode
implants to text and type words just by thinking about them. The
implant converts signals from the patient’s neurons into com-
mands, which are beamed wirelessly to a computer. The surgical
procedure takes two hours and involves no cutting of the skull or
sewing wires onto the brain’s surface. In July, Synchron got the
green light from the FDA to start clinical trials. If all goes well, Syn-
chron’s technology could help patients with neurological damage
and paralysis communicate with family, share business ideas with
colleagues, pay their bills—in short, to reclaim their lives. —m.g.

DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
A Membrane That Sucks
Impurities From Water
RODNEY PRIESTLEY, XIAOHUI XU
PROFESSOR, POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER,
ore than 800 million
people worldwide lack ac-
cess to safe drinking water.
Over half the U.S. population drinks
from water with detectable lead levels,
studies suggest. And even as the pan-
demic reminded us of the importance
of frequent handwashing with soap
and water, three in 10 people around
the globe can’t do that in their own
homes. The World Health Organi-
zation and UNICEF warn that these
numbers are likely to get worse in the
next decade unless societies create
and improve water infrastructure—a
vast and expensive proposition.
A new tool for meeting this chal-
lenge has emerged from the labora-
tory of Princeton University chemical
engineers Rodney Priestley and Xiao-
hui Xu. They have created a material
that removes impurities in drinking
20 NEWSWEEK.COM
PRINCETON UNIVERSIT
water, requires no additional energy
source beyond sunshine and is poten-
tially cheap to manufacture.
The two engineers stumbled on
their new approach while working on
a project to make artificial skin to help
heal wounds. Skin typically acts as a
selective shield—keeping pathogens
out of the body, while still permitting
water to pass through it. To make ar-
tificial skin, they created a hydrogel
(a complex polymer that will not dis-
solve in water) with a molecular struc-
ture that would permit the passage of
water and block contaminants.
As they developed and tested this
material, Xu realized the hydrogel
might potentially have another ap-
plication: water purification. That
spurred a new project, in which the
two researchers modified their hy-
drogel in a few key ways so it would
TTING-EDGE
BREAKTHROUGHS
JUST SO COOL
OR OUT THERE
DE C E M BE R 24, 2021

ILLUSTRATION BY BRIT T SPENCER; SOURCE PHOTO OF XU BY LINGZHI CAI; PRIESTLEY BY DAVID KELLY CROW
t only filter impurities, but actively
aw water in as wel
des ned their hydrogel so
that it acts as a heat-sensitive sponge.
At room temperature, compounds in
the hydrogel attract water molecules.
When heated, the molecular struc-
ture changes and the gel releases
water. “Inside it is highly porous so it
can store the water,” explains Xiaohui
Xu. “When you heat it, the volume of
“We just
realized there
was a huge
opportunity in
this space to
try and do this
in a sustainable
manner.”
e material will shrink [and] all o
e water inside will be released.”
Then they covered the layer of
spongy
mer that acts as a filter. As the sponge
draws in the water, the outer layer
keeps impurities from entering. These
layers sandwiched together form a thin,
sheetlike “membrane.” In their testing
to date, they’ve found the combined
layers can block problem particles like
lead and nitrates from agricultural run-
off. “It effectively just sucks in all of the
pure water while leaving out all of the
contaminants,” Priestley explains.
Priestley and Xu’s invention has
many advantages over water purifica-
tion systems already in use by NGOs. It
needs no power source—no electricity
to run a pump—other than sunshine,
which makes it easier to deploy. And
the membrane is potentially cheaper
to produce than conventional filters
and can be manufactured without us-
ing harsh chemical solvents. “We just
realized there was a huge opportunity
in this space to try and do this in a sus-
tainable manner,” Priestley says.
Michael Brown, CEO of AquaPao,
the company developing and com-
mercializing this technology, notes
that the material can be used not
only for filtering water but for col-
lecting drinkable water from the at-
mosphere. “If you put the membrane
outside, it will start attracting water
at a pretty significant rate,” he notes.
Before the invention is ready for
prime time, Priestley and Xu still
need to investigate how durable the
membrane is. And like other water
filters and purifiers, it’s not 100 per-
cent effective at removing all contam-
inants—it’s unlikely, for instance, to
provide an efficient solution for de-
salinating salt water.
Still, Priestley adds, having a sys-
tem that treats water for many dif-
ferent types of impurities could put
their material ahead of many other
approaches: “We have shown the abil-
ity to purify many different types of
impurities—heavy metals like lead,
small molecules, organic matter like
microbes and yeast and oil contami-
nants. If it turns out that it’s a mem-
brane that can really purify 20 differ-
ent impurities as opposed to just one
targeted impurity, I think that would
also set it apart.” —daisy yuhas
NEWSWEEK.COM 21
Pig Kidney Transplants
for Humans
ROBERT MONTGOMERY
DIRECTOR, NYU LANGONE
TRANSPLANT INSTITUTE

Three years ago, doctors told Dr.

Montgomery, who has a rare, progres-
sive disease of the heart muscle, that
he needed a transplant. He joined
more than 106,800 Americans in
organ-transplant purgatory, waiting
for a donor organ—a wait 17 people
fail to outlast each day. “This paradigm
just isn’t working,” he says. “We need a
renewable, unlimited source of organs.”
Dr. Montgomery has devoted much
of his 20-plus years as a transplant
surgeon to that end. He pioneered the
use of organs from donors infected
ZLWK KHSDWLWLV & DQG SHUIRUPHG WKH ɿUVW
“domino paired donation,” which com-
bines two or more donors and recipients
in a kidney swap. In September, he and
his team succeeded in transplanting a
genetically-engineered pig kidney into FIRST HELICOPTER
a human body (since it was a test case,
the recipient was a patient who had
lost brain function). The body did not
FLIGHT ON MARS
reject the kidney, and over a 54-hour
test run, the pig organ performed like MIMI AUNG — FORMER PROJECT MANAGER, NASA’S JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
a normal human kidney. He expects
a similar procedure to be performed
on a live patient in the next year or so. iMi
Mi Aung has had a very good year. On April 19, the six-year
Montgonery is optimistic that within
a decade, pig organs will be a viable project she led to get a helicopter to fly in the thin atmo-
option for those on dialysis or in need sphere of Mars finally reached fruition: The extraterrestrial air-
of a kidney transplant—and eventually
craft Ingenuity took off from the planet’s surface for a 39-second
h
hearts, llungs and
d other
h organs. —K.R.
flight. It has since made 15 more trips to gather data and photos
and help guide the Perseverance rover.

)520/()71<8/$1*21(+($/7+1$6$ʔ-3/ʝ&$/7(&+
This first-of-a-kind venture had many challenges to over-
come: the thinness of the planet’s atmosphere, which is less
than one percent the density of Earth’s, the intense cold of Mars
and the seven-month voyage through space to get there. Also,
the communications delay between Earth and Mars meant that
the helicopter largely had to pilot itself. Aung recently moved
on to a new challenge: building a network of satellites for
broadband internet connection in her new job at Amazon’s
Project Kuiper. Her former team of engineers and scientists
at NASA will carry on creating Ingenuity’s successors—larger
aircraft capable of carrying rock samples. —k.r.

DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
 M I ND B LOW ERS
Biologically-Inspired
Robot Swarms
RADHIKA NAGPAL — COMPUTER SCIENTIST, WYSS INSTITUTE FOR
BIOLOGICALLY INSPIRED ENGINEERING AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
f harvard researcher
Radhika Nagpal has her
way, thousands of tiny ro-
bots will soon work together clean-
ing up chemical spills, building dams
and inspecting bridges. “We are really
on the cusp of a revolution in robot-
ics,” she says.
Nagpal and her team create ro-
bots that mimic real-life organisms,
self-organizing and collaborating to
complete complex tasks beyond what
any individual robot can do. Their
role, as she sees it, is to free up hu-
mans from “the 3Ds:” tasks that are
dirty, dull or dangerous.
Her team’s first project was in-
spired by termites. A thousand-robot
army, the Kilobots, are now being used
in labs around the world for research
,//8675$7,21%<$/(;),1((/,=$*5,11(//ʔ+$59$5'6($6
and education. In 2021, her lab built
underwater robots, the BlueSwarm,
that act like a school of fish, complete
with intricate migration patterns and
predator-evasion tactics, for monitor-
ing damage to coral reefs. Because
there’s no WiFi or GPS underwater,
these deep-sea explorers mimic the
bioluminescence of living sea crea-
tures to communicate with one an-
other. The next commercial project,
Nagpal thinks, will be aerial swarms
that can inspect crops and deliver
packages. When the military adopts
swarm technology, it could change
the nature of conflict. “As we go for-
ward into the future and these sys-
tems are deployed,” she says, “we are
going to learn lots of new lessons of
what that means.” —meghan gunn
DNA Printers to Spur
Vaccine Development
DANIEL GIBSON
CO-FOUNDER, CTO, CODEX DNA
A few years ago, as scientists availed
themselves of then-new technology for
deciphering the genetic code of viruses,
Gibson turned his attention to the
opposite activity: how to take that code
and turn it into an actual virus, the better
to study it and come up with vaccines. At
the time, scientists had to order short se-
TXHQFHVRI'1$IURPVSHFLDOW\ɿUPVDQG
stitch them together to form long ones.
Gibson’s idea was to make that process
quicker, easier and cheaper by automat-
ing it with so-called DNA printers.
Gibson’s BioXp 3250, a 2-by-2-foot
device, gives scientists the means to
synthesize genes in the lab in eight
hours, helping speed the design and
fabrication of new vaccine candidates
and other biological products. Last year,
3ɿ]HUXVHGWKHGHYLFHWRKHOSGHYHORS
its COVID-19 vaccine. Today, Codex
DNA, where Gibson is chief technolo-
J\RIɿFHUKDVVROGPRUHWKDQRI
the printers. Together with academic
research institutions and biopharma
companies, Gibson is working on
vaccines, precision immunotherapy
for cancer, meat substitutes and other
projects. His next goal is to build a
vaccine printer “capable of synthesizing
and delivering vaccines globally at the
push of a button,” he says. “This would
enable a future where we stamp out
viral outbreaks in real time, at a regional
level, before they ever reach pandemic
status.” ʡ.(55,$11(5(1=8//,
NEWSWEEK.COM 23
 G A BR I E L A CE L EST E /G RO I NT E L L I G E N CE

“The most critical tool for success in

the [food] industry—data and knowledge—
is becoming cheaper by the day.”

AI and Big Data to
Help Feed the World
SARA MENKER — FOUNDER, CEO, GRO INTELLIGENCE
y 2050, the united na-
tions says, we’re going to
need 70 percent more food
to feed the nine billion people living
on Earth. Global climate change threat-
ens to upend their lives—worsening
storms, droughts, heat waves and crop
diseases. What kind of a world will we
leave to our grandchildren?
Sara Menker says the problem may
be even more urgent than the U.N.
suggests. In 2017, she gave a TED talk
in which she said a “tipping point,”
beyond which global food markets be-
come too overwhelmed to function ef-
fectively, could come in just a few years.
“We discovered that the world will be
short 214 trillion calories by 2027,” she
said. Or, in more familiar terms: “A sin-
gle Big Mac has 563 calories. That means
the world will be short 379 billion Big
Macs in 2027. That is more Big Macs
than McDonald’s has ever produced.”
Menker cannot change the world
alone. But the firm she started, Gro
Intelligence, is providing informa-
tion that food companies, insurers,
lenders and policymakers use to
make food production more efficient,
and perhaps help protect against that
tipping point.
DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
Gro says it tracks 650 trillion data
points daily—from sources such as
government and local food reports,
satellite imagery, long-term weather
forecasts and greenhouse gas mea-
surements—and creates computer
models so that clients, such as Unile-
ver and Yum! Brands, can know how
prices are likely to trend, anticipate
surpluses and shortages, and be more
resilient when climate change makes
food supplies harder to predict.
A type of artificial intelligence
known as machine learning is key
to crunching the numbers because,
as Allison Tepley of Gro’s staff put it,
“The best information is often local
information, but it’s often in local
languages, in different formats and
it all needs to be put together.”
This is a larger compilation of
food-supply data than decision-makers
can find elsewhere. Gro tracks 1,000
different crops; the U.S. Agriculture De-
partment tracks about 50. The level of
detail, says the firm, is essential to catch
trouble quickly and help producers
take action to protect the food supply.
Gro has sounded alerts on African
swine fever in China (which cut pork
production 30 percent in 2018), locust
INNOVATORS
HELPING TO
COUNTER CLIMATE
CHANGE AND OTHER
ENVIRONMENTAL
CHALLENGES
infestation in East Africa in 2020 and
global inflation in food prices—wors-
ened in the short term by COVID and
long term by climate disruption.
“It’s not something that’s going to go
away soon,” says Menker. “It’s basical-
ly driven both by supply and demand
shocks continuously happening.”
She was born in Ethiopia, came
to the U.S. for college and business
school and was working as a commod-
ities trader at Morgan Stanley when
she saw the chaos in food markets. She
started Gro in 2014. “What alarmed
me,” she says, “was there was a lot of
conversation about food security and
a lot of people trying to fix a system
that we didn’t understand.”
History is filled, of course, with
predictions of disaster that never
happened. And Menker says there are
many things the world can do now.
America and Europe, for instance,
enjoyed a so-called green revolution
in the last century—doubling or tri-
pling food output because of new
crops and farming methods. India
has had one, too. No countries in Af-
rica have yet, but they still can.
Part of the answer, she says, is in
adopting many of the commercial
practices that have worked in the
wealthier countries—more efficient
markets, better transportation and
changes in farming that will both
increase the food supply and pro-
tect the environment. And her own
work shows, she says, that “the most
critical tool for success in the [food]
industry—data and knowledge—is
becoming cheaper by the day.” —n.p.
NEWSWEEK.COM 25
 PLANET PROTECTORS

MAKING BLUE
JEANS LESS TOXIC
TAMMY HSU — CO-FOUNDER, CHIEF SCIENTIFIC OFFICER, HUUE

iller-looking jeans, unfortunately, also contribute to killing the

planet. Chemicals such as formaldehyde and cyanide that are
used to make the indigo dye that gives denim its distinctive color
are often toxic to workers and destructive to local water sources.
An Eco-Friendly Hsu and her team created an eco-friendly, worker-safe bio-
Alternative to Plastic engineered alternative by programming microbes to mimic the
TROY SWOPE AND YOKE CHUNG
way color compounds occur in nature, using sugar to enzymat-
FOUNDERS, FOOTPRINT ically produce the same blue shade as indigo. Huue’s dye can be
manufactured in existing factories, making it easily adoptable
Working as Intel engineers early in
their career, Swope and Chung made
within the industry. This fall, Huue partnered with biotech com-
a shocking discovery while testing pany Ginkgo Bioworks to ramp up production and plans to begin
plastic-wrapped supermarket foods
shipping dye to designers early next year. —m.g.
for contamination. “No food was left
untouched by plastic chemicals leaching
into it,” Chung says. Every year in the
U.S., 150 million tons of single-use
plastic are used in consumer goods like
disposable cutlery and containers. Along
with the harmful health risks, less than 9
percent of this material gets recycled; the
UHVWJRHVWRODQGɿOOVRULVLQFLQHUDWHGUH-
leasing toxic fumes into the environment.
Swope and Chung’s solution: Create
plant-based biodegradable, com-
postable and recyclable alternatives
to single-use plastic. Their company
Footprint, founded in 2014, has already

FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF FO OTPRINT; COURTESY OF GO OD NATURE

eliminated more than 60 million pounds
of plastic through partnerships with
mega food retailers like Costco, Whole
Foods, Trader Joe’s, Sweetgreen, Mc-
Donald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, which use
its plates, bowls, packaging and related
products. Now the founders are taking
their bid to save the planet to the next
level with a partnership with the NBA’s
Phoenix Suns, aiming to make its arena—
renamed the Footprint Center this year—
into an innovation lab for sustainability
that can be replicated in sports venues
DURXQGWKHZRUOG$PRQJWKHɿUVWVWHSV
As of October, Suns fans are getting their
burgers and beer served up in Foot-
print’s plant-based cups and containers,
along with educational messages and
advice about sustainability. —M.G.

26 NEWSWEEK.COM

Reducing CO2 Via
Alternative Energy
BILL GROSS — FOUNDER, HELIOGEN;
CO-FOUNDER, ENERGY VAULT, CARBON CAPTURE
ross is a triple-threat,
with not one but three sep-
arate ventures devoted to
C OU RT E SY O F B I L L G RO SS
reducing carbon emissions through
the use of alternative energy. It’s been
a lifelong interest dating back to 1973,
when he was a teenager in Southern
California during the oil embargo and
his family could only buy $5 worth
De c e m be r 24, 2021
of rationed gasoline every other day.
“That had a huge impact on me,” he says.
Gross has devoted his career to
developing technology to solve en-
ergy challenges. His company Helio-
gen harnesses the sun’s power using
mirrors so precisely positioned via
software that they produce thermal
energy up to 1,000 degrees Celsius—
nearly twice as much as other sys-
tems. That’s hot enough for industrial
use, like steel and cement production,
whose high heat demands currently
account for about a tenth of global
greenhouse gas emissions (more than
all cars and planes combined).
Meanwhile, Gross’ startup Energy
Vault successfully built a system that
stores energy in 35-ton blocks that
are stacked in a tower; the blocks
are made of dirt and waste materials,
rendering it safer, cheaper and lon-
ger-lasting than other energy storage
systems. As Bernard Meyerson, chief
innovation officer at IBM notes,
“There is no carbon footprint to speak
of and the technology is based on ab-
surdly simple science with some very
cool engineering thrown in.”
Lastly, Gross’ Carbon Capture
makes machines that remove CO2
from the atmosphere using Direct
Air Capture tech. Gross says: “I would
like my collection of companies to
someday combine to be the largest
CO2 ‘avoider’ in history.” —K.R., M.G.
NEWSWEEK.COM 27
 AN APP TO
REPLENISH FORESTS
DAVID ‘EZRA’ JAY — CO-FOUNDER,EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GREENSTAND

avid ‘ezra’ jay is working Planters submit geotagged photos

to combat deforestation of their trees periodically, the app cal-
one tree at a time—collec- culates a value for the ecological im-
tively, he’s surpassed 750,000 trees pact based on the tree’s location and
planted so far. He’s also committed to rate of growth, then packages the data
trying to alleviate global poverty. The in a digital wallet the growers can ac-
app Treetracker, an open-source, da- cess and trade. For poverty-stricken
ta-driven software platform developed farmers in areas like sub-Saharan Af-
Better Farming by Jay and his team via Greenstand, rica and South Asia, the process pro-
Through AI the nonprofit he heads, attepts to ac- vides income and a way to earn their
complish both goals by verifying and livelihood by restocking forests rather
RANVEER CHANDRA — CTO, AGRI- monitoring farmers around the world than clearing them for crops. Today,
FOOD; MANAGING DIRECTOR, RE- who plant and care for trees, then fa- the app is used by more than 4,700
SEARCH FOR INDUSTRY,MICROSOFT
cilitating payments to these growers growers worldwide and has the back-
Can the WiFi chip in your phone help from donations by partnering groups. ing of the World Bank. —k.r.
feed the world? That’s the question Bill
Gates posed about FarmBeats, part
RI0LFURVRIWŠVɿUVW$J7HFKLQLWLDWLYH
led by Chandra. FarmBeats aims to
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IDUPLQJŜVD\IHHOLQJRUWDVWLQJWKHVRLO
to determine when to plant, water and
KDUYHVWŜZLWK$,LQIRUPHGWRROVDQG
VHQVRUVOLNHKHDWDQGPRLVWXUHPDSV
that help farmers use less water and
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and lime to control the pH in soil.
7KHVWLFNLQJSRLQWVZHUHSULFHVHQ
VRUVDUHH[SHQVLYHDQGODFNRILQWHUQHW
access on most farms, but Chandra
DQGKLVWHDPGHYHORSHGDFOHYHUZRUN

)520/()70,&5262)7,//8675$7,21%<%5,7 763(1&(5
DURXQGXVLQJ79ZKLWHVSDFHXQXVHG
79EURDGFDVWVSHFWUXPDNDţVQRZŤ
WRWUDQVPLWGDWD,QVWHDGRIIDUPHUV
EX\LQJKXQGUHGVRIH[SHQVLYHVHQVRUV
they place a few far apart. The farmer
WKHQZDONVDURXQGZLWKDVPDUWSKRQH
attached to a drone or helium balloon,
WDNLQJDHULDOYLGHRGDWDIURPWKH
VHQVRUVLVVHQWWKURXJKWKHZKLWH
VSDFHWRDFRPSXWHUZKHUHHYHU\WKLQJ
LVDJJUHJDWHGLQWRDK\SHUVSHFLɿF
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ZRUOGZLGHVWDUWLQJZLWKUHFHQWSDUW
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$JULFXOWXUHDQG/DQG2Š/DNHVŜ0*

28 NEWSWEEK.COM EMBER 24, 20

 P L A NE T P RO T E C T O RS

Tech Help for

Food Insecurity
DAVID HUGHES
FOUNDER, PLANTVILLAGE

Penn State entomologist David Hughes

originally started PlantVillage as a side
hustle to his main work researching ant
fungus (his early Twitter handle: “@
ZombieAntGuy”). But the initiative,
which leverages AI, mobile phones,
drones, satellites and nanotechnology
to help small farmers combat plant
diseases that threaten their crops,
has since become his main gig—and
passion. The greater goal: to help end
global food insecurity, which has 41
million people on the brink of famine,
according to the World Food Program.
Among PlantVillage’s innovations:
a U.N.-backed app Nuru (Swahili for

Making Eggs
light) that uses AI to help farmers,
mostly in Africa, diagnose, treat and
track plant diseases. Last year, when

Without the Chicken historic swarms of locusts posed a major

ARTURO ELIZONDO — FOUNDER AND CEO, THE EVERY COMPANY
inety-nine percent of farmed animals in the U.S. are raised
on factory farms—and most never see the sun or walk on
grass. As a young intern at the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Elizondo learned that more than one million animals are slaugh-
tered per hour at USDA facilities, and that animal agriculture
is the number one contributor to deforestation and species ex-
tinction. “I knew there had to be a way to make protein without
destroying the planet in the process,” he says.
FROM TOP: TRI NGUYEN; COURTESY OF DAVID HUGHES
risk to crops in Kenya, Ethiopia and
other countries, Hughes’ team quickly
created another app, eLocust3M, to
track and forecast the insects’ move-
ment, helping save food for 40 million
people. According to users, Hughes says,
the two apps together have increased
IDUPSURɿWVE\WRSHUFHQW
Even bigger initiatives lie ahead. At the
&23FOLPDWHFRQIHUHQFHODVWPRQWK
the U.S. Agency for International Devel-
opment awarded $39 million to establish
the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for
Current and Emerging Threats to Crops
at Penn State—to be led by Hughes
and powered by PlantVillage. —K.R.

After more than six years of research, the startup he founded

to devise a solution is finally coming out of its shell: This October,
The EVERY Company launched the first animal-free egg protein,
made by infusing a 3D-printed DNA sequence of chicken egg pro-
tein into yeast and then fermenting it, similar to the way brewers
make beer. The end result is a protein that food and beverage mak-
ers can add to their products for nutrition, without the obvious
taste of traditional alternate proteins. The process doesn’t require
animals and uses less water, land and energy than factory farms
do. Says Elizondo: “The only way to truly transform our food
system was to meet people egg-xactly where they’re at.” —m.g.

NEWSWEEK.COM 29

Developing
the Tech that Made
covid Vaccines Possible
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, BIONTECH
ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF NEUROSURGERY,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
atalin karikó admits
that at the beginning of
2020, when word began to
spread of a novel virus called COVID-19,
she really didn’t think it would turn
into a pandemic. She was as surprised
as anyone. But there was one differ-
ence: She was ready. She’d been getting
ready, in a sense, for almost 40 years.
Karikó, a molecular biologist,
had been working since her student
days on messenger RNA—mRNA for
short—a compound in living cells
that carries genetic instructions for
making proteins for all sorts of pur-
poses. It has turned out to be the key
ingredient in the COVID-19 vaccines
jointly made by Pfizer and BioNTech,
and by their competitor Moderna.
“I thought this would be good for
30 NEWSWEEK.COM
VISIONARIES
WHOSE
CAREER-LONG
ACTIONS HAVE HAD
FAR-REACHING
IMPACT
KATALIN KARIKÓ
something,” she says now. “I hoped
that maybe I would live long enough
to see one person who would benefit.”
It has not been an easy path. Born
and educated in Hungary, she came
with her husband and daughter to Phil-
adelphia in 1985, hoping to work her
way up as a research scientist studying
mRNA at Temple University. But what
was the stuff good for? Stroke patients?
Cancers? Cystic fibrosis? Diabetes? All
of these and more, at least in theory, but
+ $ 1 1 $ +  <2 2 1 ʔ % /2 2 0 % ( 5 * ʔ* ( 7 7 <
mRNA was stubbornly difficult to work
with, and early experiments failed. So
grant money was hard to come by,
and without funding, the American
system is unforgiving to young Ph.Ds.
In a few years she moved to the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, where she
bounced from lab to lab, once tak-
ing a demotion when more senior
scientists couldn’t afford to keep her.
Then, in 1998, waiting to use a copy-
ing machine, she got to talking with
Dr. Drew Weissman, an immunologist
who was trying to develop a vaccine
for HIV, and thought her experience
with mRNA might be helpful. They
began to work together.
One of the difficulties with mRNA
was that while it can get a cell to
make all sorts of proteins, it can also
provoke a strong inflammatory reac-
tion. In 2005, Karikó and Weissman
“saved the world.” After all those years
found a way to modify it so that it
wouldn’t—a critical advance in mak-
ing mRNA vaccines possible. The med-
ical world paid little attention at the
time, but by 2013 she got a job offer
from BioNTech, then a small German
startup. They began to produce mRNA
vaccines. When COVID-19 appeared
and its genetic code was deciphered,
Karikó’s colleagues were able to de-
velop the chemistry for a shot in less
than a day.
“By that time, we knew,” says Karikó.
There still needed to be clinical trials
in the U.S. and other countries, but
the science behind mRNA vaccines
had been established. “No matter
what vaccination we did—influenza,
herpes, HIV—mRNA was so much
better than anything available.”
Now, with more than 200 mil-
lion Americans vaccinated against
COVID-19, Karikó’s life is a succes-
sion of award ceremonies, honorary
lectures and declarations that she
of struggle, she is the toast of the sci-
entific universe. She admits that she’s
gotten choked up a few times at peo-
ple’s gratitude, but she fends off any
suggestion that she’s a hero. Rather,
she wishes there had never been a
pandemic to make her look like one.
“I always think that the people who
are the health care workers, who were
taking care of the patients—they
were risking their lives every day,” she
says. “Me? I was not a hero. I never
risked my life. I went to the lab.” —N.P.

“I thought this would be good

for something. I hoped that maybe
I would live long enough to
see one person who would benefit.”

NEWSWEEK.COM 31
Altering DNA
to Cure Disease
JENNIFER DOUDNA — CO-FOUNDER,
INTELLIA THERAPEUTICS

In defending themselves against attack-

ing viruses, bacteria use a naturally-oc-
curring technique of slicing up a virus’
genetic material and pasting it into their
own. Jennifer Doudna, a professor at
the University of California, Berkeley
and co-founder of the biotechnology
ɿUP,QWHOOLDIRXQGVKHFRXOGPLPLFWKLV
technique to edit the DNA of humans—
adding, deleting or replacing new
genetic instructions for human cells. This
method of gene-editing, known as CRIS-
PR, has proven to be faster, cheaper and
more accurate than other approaches. It
M
OF THE T A
has already shaken up the world of life
sciences, leading to new treatments for
genetic diseases such as sickle cell ane-
mia and some eye and liver diseases.
For this work, Doudna and fellow ELON MUSK — FOUNDER, TESLA, SPACEX
researcher Emmanuelle Charpentier
received the Nobel Prize in chemistry
last year. This summer, CRISPR was heree are at least two faces of Musk. One is the headline-grab-
used to treat a rare disease directly
through an intravenous infusion, rather
bing rebel-without-cause whose tasteless joke-tweets have
b
than having to remove cells, manipulate drawn the ire of financial regulators, goaded Senator Bernie Sanders
them and reintroduce them to the body,
about tax policy (“I keep forgetting you’re still alive”) and compared
as current methods required. “It’s a
clear indication that a new era of genetic outgoing Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to a victim of a Stalinist purge.
medicine is now upon us,” says Doudna. All that noise obscures the other side of Musk—the one who is
“I’m hopeful that over the next few years,
these results can be replicated to other arguably the most prolific and disruptive technologist of the 21st
target disease areas and organs such century. At 50, Musk has racked up an impressive string of firsts or
as the brain and heart, where molecular
near-firsts. He’s had a hand in building a pioneering digital payment
GHOLYHU\LVPRUHGLIɿFXOWŤŜ.5
system (PayPal), a reusable rocket (SpaceX) that carries astronauts

, / /867 5 $7 , 2 1  %<  % 5 , 7 7  6 3 ( 1 & ( 5   $ / ( ; $ 1 ' ( 5  + ( , 1 / ʔ* ( 7 7 <

and supplies for NASA and tourists, and a car company (Tesla) that
has played an outsized role in bringing electric vehicles and battery
technology for renewable energy into the mainstream. Even bolder
ventures are in progress: artificial-intelligence enhancements to the
human brain (Neuralink) and high-speed mass-transit tunnels for
large cities (The Boring Company and Hyperloop). And he wants to
send people to Mars.
Musk draws comparisons to Thomas Edison, who had a sim-
ilarly broad impact and difficult personality. Whereas Edison
was by nature an inventor, Musk is more of an impresario, as-
sembling the technical, business and investing talent he needs
in service of a grand engineer’s vision. —f.g.

DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
 H AL L O F FAM ERS
Removing Carbon
from the Air
KLAUS LACKNER — DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR NEGATIVE CARBON EMISSIONS
laus lackner first float-
ed the idea of removing car-
bon directly from the air as
a way of putting the brakes on climate
change in 1999, and he has been de-
voted to figuring out how ever since.
His single vision can seem like
tilting at windmills. The prospect of
keeping up with the 33 billion tons
of carbon the world releases into
the atmosphere each year, let alone
removing enough of it to return to
pre-industrial levels, is daunting. But
the vastness and urgency of the prob-
lem argues for pursuing every avail-
able means. Lackner’s leadership has
helped focus some of the world’s best
minds on carbon capture.
For years, Lackner, a professor at
the School of Sustainable Engineer-
ing at Arizona State University, has
worked to develop a mechanical
tree that removes carbon dioxide
a thousand times more efficiently
than natural trees and requires no
energy to operate. It relies on wind
to blow air past resin-encrusted discs,
FROM TOP: COURTESY OF TRIMBLE; ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
which absorb the greenhouse gas (to
be eventually stored permanently
underground or reused in industrial
processes). A Dublin-based tech com-
pany, Carbon Collect, got $2.5 million
from the Department of Energy this
summer to build three “carbon farms”
of Lackner’s trees capable of captur-
ing 1,000 tons of the substance each
day—about 1,844 American house-
holds’ worth of emissions.
Carbon capture is now moving
into the mainstream. Elon Musk, Mi-
crosoft and Occidental Petroleum
have made large financial commit-
ments in the last year to technologies
for taking carbon directly from the
atmosphere. Currently 19 direct-air
capture plants are operating around
the world, the largest of which came
online in September in Iceland. The
federal government offers tax credits
and the infrastructure bill passed in
November includes more than $10
billion for carbon-capture projects,
including $3.5 billion to build four
regional direct air capture hubs.
It’s too early to know if carbon
capture will ever amount to more
than a drop in the climate bucket.
But if someone eventually figures
out how to make it work at scale,
we’ll all owe a debt to Lackner. —k.r.
The Hidden Figure
Behind GPS
GLADYS WEST — MATHEMATICIAN,
U.S. NAVAL PROVING GROUND
It’s hard to imagine a world without the
global positioning system, the network
of satellites whose signals provide our
digital devices with the ability to deter-
mine, with startling accuracy, the precise
ORFDWLRQRI\RXUFDUVWXFNLQWUDIɿFRQWKH
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway or tag your
pals on social media. GPS wouldn’t have
been possible without the work of West,
a mathematician and computer scientist.
In 1956, West became the second
Black woman hired by the U.S. Naval
Proving Ground, a weapons laboratory
in Dahlgren, Virginia, and one of just
four Black employees. She wrote soft-
ware for submarine-launched ballistic
missiles and a program to calculate the
position of Pluto relative to Neptune,
which won accolades from her peers.
In 1978, she became the project
manager of Seasat, an experimental
satellite designed to demonstrate the
feasibility of gathering data about
the oceans from low-earth orbit. That
project called for a computer program
that could precisely calculate the path
of the satellite as it passed over the
surface of the Earth, with its mountains
and plateaus and oceans. To accom-
SOLVKLW:HVWɿUVWKDGWRGHYLVHDZD\
of mathematically representing in
detail the shape of the Earth that could
be incorporated into the software.
That pioneering work eventually
led to GPS, now essential to digital
systems that use location tracking—of
trucks, packages, cellphones, missiles
and airplanes. Ironically, West her-
self, who was inducted into the U.S.
Air Force Hall of Fame in 2018 and
recently turned 91, prefers navigating
by old-fashioned paper maps. —M.G.
NEWSWEEK.COM 33
Globalizing
Streaming Content
BELA BAJARIA — HEAD OF GLOBAL TV, NETFLIX
ho would have guessed
that the breakout hits on
American television this
year would be Squid Game, a survival
story from Korea, and Lupin, a French
thriller about a Black gentleman
thief? Even Bela Bajaria says there
was no way to predict it. But as the
head of global television at Netflix,
it’s her job to find the next big show—
and if it comes from an unexpected
corner of the planet, all the better.
“There has been this pervasive idea
that only Hollywood exports stories,
which I find really limits who gets to
tell those stories,” Bajaria says. “We’re
pushing beyond that and opening
the doors to creators of all different
types around the world.”
Netflix is the world’s largest stream-
ing service, which makes Bajaria one
of the most influential programmers
34 NEWSWEEK.COM
in television. Show by show, she and
her colleagues are changing our view-
ing diet. In the last two years, the
company says American viewing of
non-English language programs has
grown 67 percent. Viewing of Japa-
nese anime in the U.S. has doubled;
so-called K-dramas from Korea have
tripled. Competitors say they’ve seen
similar trends—shows from one coun-
try doing remarkably well elsewhere.
COVID-19 has obviously played a
role: People hunkered down at home
and looked for interesting things to
watch. If a series from Germany or
Mexico trended on TikTok or turned
up on best-shows-to-binge-on lists,
people binged on it. Netflix makes it
easy to cross borders; it dubs shows PEOPLE
in 34 languages and offers subtitles WHO ARE USING
in 37. Subscribers can see a larger TECHNOLOGY
slice of the world as a result. TO CHANGE THE
CULTURAL
CONVERSATION
 “We’re pushing
beyond that and
opening the doors
to creators of all
different types
around the world.”

very much a business, and Netflix,

Bajaria knows a bit about world-
views from childhood experience.
C H R I STO PH E R PATE Y/CO N TOU R /G ET T Y
“When you’re a kid, you just want
to belong. So I ended up watching
with something like 175 million view-
ers in the U.S. (the company is selec-
tive about what numbers it releases),
is now growing most rapidly in other
countries. So it’s looking for Brazilian
shows that attract Brazilian viewers,
or Spanish shows that will build a fol-
lowing in Spain. If that also means a
more diverse offering of programs for
subscribers in Tennessee or New Jer-
sey, it may broaden viewers’ perspec-
tives, but it also helps the bottom line.
Still, says Bajaria, “The good news is
it’s not an either/or. The variety, qual-
ity and authenticity of our local con-
tent drives our business. And at the
same time, great television is a mirror
and a window. We think more people
deserve to see themselves represented
on screen, and that’s the mirror part.”
So what kept Bajaria watching
Squid Game? (If you haven’t seen it,
the story, as told by director Hwang
Dong-hyuk, involves people, down
on their luck, forced to play chil-

She was born in London to parents
who had come from India. They
moved to Zambia when she was lit-
tle, and brought her to Los Angeles
when she was 9 years old. “I was this
Indian brown girl and I also had a
British accent, and that was too
many things at an age when fitting
in felt more important,” she says.
a lot of TV to get rid of my accent.”
She says she learned American cul-
ture by binging on Bewitched and
The Brady Bunch—and sounded like
other Americans in two months.
“Now,” she says, “I embrace being dif-
ferent and think it is a superpower. My
9-year-old self didn’t know that.”
Remember that television is still
dren’s games with win-or-die conse-
quences.) Did she react to it because
it was different? Or because it was
familiar?
Bajaria says it was a bit of both.
Hwang, she says, “made a very specif-
ic local story that was deeply Korean,
but those ideas and themes connect-
ed much more broadly.” —N.P.

De c e m be r 24, 2021 NEWSWEEK.COM 35

IGNITING A SOCIAL JUSTICE
MOVEMENT WITH A CELLPHONE
DARNELLA FRAZIER — SOCIAL ACTIVIST
razier was not the first person to witness an act of police bru-
tality, record it and have the recording go viral—that action
dates back at least 30 years, to 1991, when Rodney King’s beating
by LAPD officers was filmed by a bystander on a nearby balcony.
But Frazier is the one who, by taking a cellphone video of George
Floyd’s killing by a white Minneapolis police officer in May 2020,
then posting it on Facebook, ignited a social justice and police re-
form movement that continues to this day—and who has inspired
countless others to reach for their cellphones when they witness or
are involved in racist encounters or acts of police violence.
Since Floyd’s death, Frazier, now just 18 years old, has received
numerous accolades for her actions, including a special Pulitzer
Prize this year for “highlighting the crucial role of citizens in jour-
nalists’ quest for truth and justice.” She’s mainly stayed out of the
spotlight, though, choosing instead to continue to quietly shine
a light on racism, police misconduct and, occasionally, random
acts of kindness, via posts on her Facebook feed. She’s also still
grappling with the personal impact of what she calls “a traumatic
life-changing experience,” writing in a poignant post on the an-
niversary of Floyd’s
Floyd s death: “It
It changed how I viewed life.
life It made
me realize how dangerous it is to be Black in America.” —m.g.
3 W
Policing Big Tech
KATIE PAUL — DIRECTOR
TECH TRANSPARENCY PROJECT
Trained as an anthropologist, Katie Paul’s
road to becoming a social media and big
tech watchdog began with witnessing
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East and North Africa. Now she and her
team at the Tech Transparency Project are
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activity that occurs on their platforms.
For instance, in 2020, TTP issued
several reports about militia groups using
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right anti-government extremist movement.
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FKDQJHLWVDGSROLFLHVDIWHUɿQGLQJWKDWWKH
site allowed minors to be targeted by con-
tent promoting anorexia, alcohol, gambling
and pill parties. “When they announced
these changes under pressure, we didn’t
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just congratulate ourselves and move
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through on their promises,” says Paul,
echoing revelations made in September by
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Still, Paul and TTP, an initiative of the
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released new reports on militia groups and
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smuggling and Apple’s covert lobbying to
prevent legislation forcing changes in its
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DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
DAV I D F E NN ER

Making Sure Musicians Get
a Fair Shake Via Blockchain
DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR, BERKLEE COLLEGE OF MUSIC
here has always been a
gulf between the few mu-
sicians who make it big
and the many, many others who have
to do something else to pay the bills.
That was true in the days of Mozart,
who died in debt. It was true in the
golden age of rock music, when re-
cord companies promoted a few stars
like The Beatles and Michael Jackson.
And it’s still true in the age of Spoti-
fy, Apple Music and other streaming
services, when most musicians get
pennies for their work.
“If you’re on Spotify right now,
listening to my band, you’d have to
stream one of our songs 786 times
for me to be able to buy a single cup
of coffee,” said Joey La Neve DeFran-
cesco of the punk rock group Down-
town Boys during a protest in March.
George Howard, a professor at
Berklee College of Music in Boston,
is out to make the future more just.
He’s introducing new technology to
make sure musicians get a fair shake.
“It’s tragic,” he says. “My main
thrust in all my work these days is
to ensure that no more will any of us
create tools or applications for artists
without artists being in the room.”
DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
GEORGE HOWARD
Howard’s experience includes
heading up an independent record
label and advising clients such as Na-
tional Public Radio and singer Carly
Simon. More recently, he’s invested a
lot of his time in blockchain—the on-
line technology behind Bitcoin and
other cryptocurrencies. Although
blockchain is mostly used for finan-
cial transactions, Howard says it
can also be used for copyrights and
contracts to protect artists and help
them earn more money.
The advantage of blockchain is that
it’s decentralized. There’s no middle-
man to take a percentage and no con-
trolling banks or record companies
to slow things down. Howard and
colleagues at Berklee and MIT have
“I’ve never been
more optimistic.”
WORKING TO
ENSURE INCLUSION
AND EQUITY
IN THE CREATOR
ECONOMY
started a blockchain platform called
RAIDAR, designed to help musicians
connect with potential clients (per-
haps filmmakers or video game de-
signers who need theme music) and
get paid for their work without losing
ownership. When a client wants to
license music, a record of the trans-
action is kept on multiple computer
servers connected online—literally,
a chain of ledgers, or “blocks.” That
keeps everyone honest, because if
one block is altered it won’t match the
others. The blockchain uses “smart
contracts”—computer programs that
issue licenses and process payments.
For now, RAIDAR is a pilot program
for students. But Howard says he
hopes to influence a new generation
of musicians to “lean into technology.”
He tells young artists that they don’t
need a record-company label if they
can leverage technology to help spread
their name and get gigs.
“It is no longer acceptable for an
artist to go, ‘All I’m going to do is just
become a master at my instrument’,”
he says.
In the future he envisions artists
moving from the stage and the record-
ing studio to the metaverse, an online
world where virtual performances
may someday be as energizing as a live
event. That kind of technology could
put musicians in direct contact with
larger audiences, giving them a chance
to profit with fewer intermediaries.
“I’ve never been more optimistic,”
Howard says, “but it’s only going to
work well if the artists are part of the
creation process.” —N.P.
NEWSWEEK.COM 39
A PLATFORM FOR FANS TO
SPONSOR THEIR FAVORITE ARTISTS
JACK CONTE, SAM YAM — CO-FOUNDERS, PATREON
ack in 2013, musician jack
Conte spent 50 days recreat-
ing the Millennium Falcon
from Stars Wars for a music video,
maxing out credit cards and draining
his savings to fund his vision, even
though he knew he’d likely earn just
$100 from it via YouTube ads. “I got
sick thinking about all of this time, en-
ergy, money and for what!? $100? The
creative system was clearly broken for
artists. There had to be a better way.”
Conte’s solution, built with former
college roommate Sam Yam, an expe-
rienced coder and start-up veteran:
Patreon, a first-of-its-kind platform
that allows fans to directly spon-
sor their favorite musicians, artists,
gamers and other creators via a re-
curring monthly or annual member-
ship, often in exchange for exclusive
access, bonus content, voting rights
to determine the artist’s next project
and other perks. Says Conte: “We’re
allowing people to make a living do-
ing what they love.”
Patreon really took off during the
pandemic when artists, stymied by
the inability to earn income from
concerts, festivals, galleries, craft
markets and other public gathering
spaces, turned to the site as a lifeline.
Creators have joined in record num-
bers over the past two years, bringing
the current total to 250,000, support-
ed by some 8 million fans; artists’
earnings over the period have tripled
as well, according to the site. Next up:
Conte is planning an offering that
will allow creators to host videos di-
rectly on the site (vs. uploading from
third-party platforms) and has teased
interest in diving into cryptocurren-
cy with its own digital token. —k.r.
A Digital
Showcase for
Black Artists
KIMBERLY DREW
ACTIVIST AND CURATOR,
VOICE
Working at the intersection of
tech, art and activism, Drew has
spent her career so far—she’s just
a decade out of college—work-
ing to innovate within the art
world’s institutions, to ensure
fair and diverse art represen-
tation in a digital age and, in
particular, to amplify the work
of Black creators. As she puts
it: “I have tried my best to use
digital communications to invite
broader audiences into conver-
sations about art and culture.”
FROM LEFT: ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX FINE; TRAVIS MAT THEWS; ILLUSTRATION BY BRIT T SPENCER
That work started in 2011
with Drew’s Tumblr blog called
Black Contemporary Art, which
made a big splash in the art
world by showcasing digitized
art by and about people of
African descent. She also spent
three years as the social media
manager for the Metropolitan
Museum of Art (her own Twitter
handle: @museummammy).
Now she’s one of the inaugural
curators of the residency pro-
gram at Voice, an environmentally
friendly NFT platform, working
on NFT projects from emerging
Black creators like Devin N. Mor-
ris, UniiQu3 and Papi Juice, an
DUWFROOHFWLYHWKDWDLPVWRDIɿUP
and celebrate the lives of queer
and trans people of color. Drew
says, “Each of these artists has
had a profound impact on the
world, and I’m honored to play
a small part in supporting their
work in the NFT space.” —M.G.
DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
ARTISTIC ADVOCATES

A Safe, Open Marketplace

for Digital Art
DEVIN FINZER, ALEX ATALLAH
CO-FOUNDERS, OPENSEA

f 2021 goes down in the history books

as the year non-fungible tokens, or NFTs,
really took off—witness headline-making
deals like Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days
fetching $69 million at auction and Jack Dorsey’s
first tweet selling for $2.9 million—OpenSea may
be the reason. Not because the site facilitated the
sale of those instantly iconic works (it didn’t), but
because the platform, the first and largest NFT mar-
ketplace, has provided a safe, open environment for
all the other creators and collectors who want to
get in on the digital art craze.
More than 90 percent of all purchases and sales
of NFTs—which essentially represent proof of
ownership for unique digital works of art stored
on a ledger known as a blockchain—now happen
on OpenSea; in November, the site that Finzer and
Atallah built surpassed $10 billion in all-time sales.
More mainstream artists and brands, like The
Weeknd and Vogue Singapore, have taken notice,
launching NFTs on its marketplace.
Success attracts competitors, including Coin-
base, the world’s second largest crypto exchange,
which announced in October that it’s building its
own NFT marketplace. But OpenSea’s founders are
betting their formula will continue to be a winning
one. As Atallah told Yahoo!: “We’ve stuck to our core
principles, which is building an open marketplace
that allows developers to be as creative as they want.
That provides safety measures for buyers, includ-
ing the longest-running collection, verification and
safety lists in the market.” —k.r.

NEWSWEEK.COM 41

Collaborative
Tech to Develop New,
Affordable Drugs
JAYKUMAR MENON — CO-FOUNDER, OPEN PHARMA
mong the many societal
shortcomings the pandem-
ic has laid bare, the failure
to get drugs and vaccines to many peo-
ple who need them is one of the most
painful and urgent. For many people
around the world, the shots that ar-
rived so expeditiously to those in the
rich countries are still out of reach.
“It’s an outrage that billions of people
have no access to the new vaccines,”
says human rights lawyer Jaykumar
Menon. “We need a new model.”
After years working as a lawyer and
advocate, Menon saw a way to poten-
tially help millions of people realize
the “human right to healthcare.” In-
spired by the software world’s concept
of “Open Source,” where developers
make their code freely available for
others to use, adapt and share, in 2014,
he co-founded the Open Source Phar-
ma Foundation (OSPF) with a team
of public health and pharmaceutical
industry experts. Their goal: to revo-
lutionize the way pharmaceuticals are
developed by shifting research from
expensive, proprietary, profit-driven
42 NEWSWEEK.COM
USING
LEADING-EDGE
TECHNOLOGY
TO SOLVE SOCIAL
AND COMMUNITY
CHALLENGES
strategies to an emphasis on sharing
resources and research insights.
One troublesome consequence of
the reliance on big pharmaceutical
companies to bring a drug from lab to
market is that it provides no incentive
to invest in diseases that take a high toll
on low-income nations and a dearth of
treatments for rare conditions, where
the pay-off for developing a new drug
is seen as too small to make sense.
OSPF’s open source approach is
intended to provide an alternative
route to new drugs. It builds on an
idea articulated by Bernard Munos, a
co-founder and pharmaceutical inno-
vation consultant, who put out a call
for open source drug development
in a 2006 article in Nature, the scien-
“It’s an outrage that
tific journal. A few open source proj-
ects followed, including Open Source
Malaria and the Indian government’s
Open Source Drug Discovery pro-
the new vaccines. We
gram. OSPF, which collaborates with
these and other efforts, has bigger am-
bitions. Menon and company want to
create a platform that promotes open
source drug and vaccine development
broadly, without a specific disease fo
cus, knitting togethher researchers and
teams around the world. To this en
they are collaboratting with scientists
at major research institutions around
the world, inclu ng Harvard Uni-
versity and the Mayo Clinic, as well
as national and continental heal
agencies in the U.S , India, Brazil, U.K.,
and the European Union. Their al
is to create and support a communi
ty that will “come ogether and work
rapidly, collaboratively and in real
time to develop critical medicines
and vaccines in are s of public health,
rather than worki g secretively and
in silos and in a manner where t
fruit [of this rese rch] may be inac-
cessible to most pe e.”
Although the grroup is small—a
core team of just s ven—they’ve had
some notable suc sses. In 2018, in
collaboration with h partners at the
Indian government’s National Insti-
tute for Tuberculo s, they brou t
metformin, a generric diabetes medi
cation, to clinical tr ls as a treatmen
for tuberculosis, ich has gott
billions of people
have no access to
need a new model.”
DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
 despite having claimed
n lives in 2020 alon
took less than a year and cost
ss than $50,000, demonstrating the
potential cost-saving appeal of their
en source approach. On a broad
scale, says Menon, it could save bil-
ons of dollars and shave years o
the typical R&D timeline.
More recently, Menon’s group has
turned its open source approach to
vaccine development. In October, one
its partners shared prelimina re-
sults on repurposing an off-patent
tuberculosis vaccine for COVID-19,
finding it could reduce the risk of se-
vere COVID-19 by 68 percent. Man
nations that will otherwise
months for COVID vaccines alread
ve it stockpiled
“If you could save society trillions
I L LUST R AT IO N BY BR I T T S P ENC ER

of dollars by curbing a pandemic

earlier, then there’s enough money
the system for everybody,” he a
gues. “If we are able to do R&D for
one thousandth the cost, w would
you not try to eliminate a m or dis-
ease from the anet?”

NEWSWEEK.

Jump-Starting
a New Tech Hub
NASHLIE SEPHUS — FOUNDER, THE BEAN PATH
rom 14 abandoned acres
in downtown Jackson, Mis-
sissippi, Nashlie Sephus is
plotting a $150 million transforma-
tion of her hometown into a new tech
hub. It’s an outgrowth of the Amazon
AI scientist’s work for the Bean Path,
a nonprofit she began in 2018 that
44 NEWSWEEK.COM
ENTERPRISING IDEALISTS
has provided tech consulting to more
than 500 local businesses and individ-
uals as well as youth programs. This
new side labor of love involves reno-
vating eight buildings and putting up
five new ones over the next three years.
They will house an innovation center
for tech skills, an electronics lab, a
photo studio, apartments, restaurants
and a grocery store.
By 2025, Sephus hopes to have cre-
ated 1,100 jobs in tech and the arts,
450 housing units, 20 grocery stores
and restaurants and added more
than 3.5 acres of event and green
space to the area. The city has kicked
in a $250,000 grant; Sephus has put
in $500,000; and Amazon, Entergy,
Airbnb, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the
Rockefeller Foundation and several
local partners are also backers.
If successful, the venture could
provide a model for other cities. But
for Sephus the motivation comes
from wanting “people educated in the
state to have similar opportunities in
STEM within the state as they do out-
side of it,” she says. “Lastly, I wanted
PO E T W I L L I A M S
more people who looked like me or
had a similar background, to be a part
of the tech movement and have their
fair chance at innovation.” —k.r.
DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
 Fighting Digital
Stop-and-Frisk
MATT MITCHELL
FOUNDER, CRYPTOHARLEM

Over-policing of marginalized neigh-

borhoods doesn’t just happen on the
streets: It’s a serious issue online, too.
After the murder of George Floyd, cops
routinely scoured social media for pro-
tester names and locations, a phenome-
non Mitchell calls “digital stop and frisk.”
Since 2013, Mitchell has run a clinic
in Manhattan called CryptoHarlem,
providing encryption tools and cyberse-
curity workshops. During last summer’s
racial reckoning, CryptoHarlem created
guides to help protesters across the
country protect their digital identities.
“As hackers, we don’t have the most faith
in laws and how they are enforced,”
says Mitchell, a former data journalist
at The New York Times. “But we know
that policy and law is an important FINTECH HELP FOR
IURQW RI WKH ɿJKW DJDLQVW VXUYHLOODQFHŤ
Mitchell believes that Black
LOW-INCOME AMERICANS
communities act as beta-testers for
powerful surveillance tools that might JIMMY CHEN — FOUNDER AND CEO, PROPEL
soon become ubiquitous. CryptoHar-
lem works with the American Civil
Liberties Union on surveillance and
efore chen formed prop- 5 million SNAP households and has
privacy legislation, such as the Public
Oversight of Surveillance Technology
pel and launched its signa- helped SNAP recipients extend their
Act, which New York City passed in ture free app, EBT Fresh, in benefits an extra day per month on
2020 to increase transparency in police 2016, the convenience of mobile bank- average, a Harvard study found. This
surveillance. “Now we just have a hard ing had passed food-stamp recipients summer Chen launched a major ex-
time enforcing it and getting the NYPD by. Even though benefits are awarded pansion of the platform, now renamed
to cooperate,” Mitchell says. “So Cryp-
toHarlem is on the streets taking photos,
in the form of an Electronic Benefit Providers. Among the new offerings:
researching tech, making sure what we Transfer card, which acts like a prepaid a free debit account with no monthly
see is what has been declared.” —M.G. debit card loaded with food stamps or overdraft, minimum balance or inac-
cash, the more than 41 million people tivity fees; information and updates on
who participate in SNAP, the U.S. food government programs; direct deposit
stamp program, had no way of check- of income and benefits, in some cases,
ing their benefits balance except by three to five days early; and personal-
calling a toll-free number or manually ized discounts. To support the service,
FROM TOP: HENRY ZHANG; NICK LEE

re-logging into a website each time.
“I wondered why there wasn’t a
mobile banking app for the EBT card,”
says Chen. “You probably don’t call
your bank to check the balance of your
account, why should you have to call
the EBT card to know your balance?”
The app is now used by more than
the company sells ads from health care,
grocery and food companies. Says
nominator Shannon Austin, a fintech
consultant: “Propel proves you can do
good and also do well, and that tech-
nology has the potential to dramatical-
ly improve the financial lives of those
who struggle.”—k.r.

NEWSWEEK.COM 45

High-Tech Poop Analysis to
Improve Public Health
MARIANA MATUS, NEWSHA GHAELI — CO-FOUNDERS, BIOBOT ANALYTICS
ur po op, it turns out,
contains a trove of useful
health data, such as what
viruses, bacteria and drugs are soon
to become public health concerns.
But getting at that data requires de-
tecting extremely low quantities of
drugs and viruses.
Matus and Ghaeli have developed
highly-sensitive technology that can
not only detect small levels but also
tease out subtle insights from the
data. For instance, it can distinguish
between opioids that people have
taken versus those they’ve flushed
down the toilet. The technology has
proven invaluable in giving officials
early warning of disease outbreaks
or rises in drug abuse, making it
possible to target tests or treat-
ments where they’re needed. It also
provides a more complete picture of
what an area is experiencing than
EN T E R P R IS I N G I D E A L I S TS
Making
Voting Systems
Safe and
other health surveillance and diag-
nosis techniques. “Everyone has a
Transparent
voice in the sewer, where even hard-
ly reached and underserved popu-
lations can be taken into account,
without bias,” says Nora D. Volkow,
director of the National Institute on
Drug Abuse.
Matus and Ghaeli’s company, Biobot
Analytics, has analyzed the wastewater
of 98 million Americans. It has been
instrumental in identifying surges in
COVID-19 before testing results are
in. Over the summer, Biobot worked
with the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention and U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services to sam-
ple more than 350 communities in
50 states and is actively testing in 140
communities, up from an initial seven
in 2020. The company has also helped
the World Bank establish wastewater
analysis in Latin America. —k.r.
BEN ADIDA
DIRECTOR, VOTINGWORKS
Many Americans are losing
faith in the ballot box—and
digital technology that
provides no way of checking
the results. Adida, a software
engineer, is working to restore
that trust by bringing a new
transparency to the tech-
nology of voting machines.
In 2018, Adida founded
9RWLQJ:RUNVDQRQSURɿWWKDW
is building voting machines
and election management
software that are fully open
source, in which developers
collaborate openly and make
their code public. As Adida
puts it, “Two voters in the
same town might disagree on
every issue yet vote using the
same equipment. That equip-
ment must be transparent,
source code and all, so every
voter can trust the outcome.”
VotingWorks developed a
software tool, Arlo, that veri-
ɿHVYRWLQJUHVXOWVE\FRPSDU-
ing a randomized sampling of
paper ballots with the digital
machine count. VotingWorks
has used Arlo to audit elec-
tion results in 10 states. This
November, North Carolina
counties used the program to
verify election results without
retaining VotingWorks to
manage the audit, suggesting
$6( <  $7 . , 16 ʔ 0 , 7
the technology can be man-
DJHGE\ ORFDO RIɿFLDOV —M.G.
DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
 FOOD PRESERVATIVES
THAT AREN’T TOXIC
JAMES ROGERS
FOUNDER AND CEO, APEEL SCIENCES

oday, one in nine people

around the world goes hun-
gry, yet almost 25 percent of
produce is wasted each year. A decade
ago, Rogers, as a graduate student in
materials science at UC Santa Barba-
ra, wondered why. “The problem was
not in the growing of food, but keep-
ing it viable once it was picked and
in transport to its final destination,”
he says. A better solution than plastic
wrapping or artificial preservatives,
Rogers thought, was to “use food to
preserve food.”
Rogers developed an invisible,
protective coating for produce that
is made up of lipids naturally found
in the produce itself. Applied by
spraying, dipping or brushing, the
coating forms an invisible, odorless
and edible (the FDA says it’s safe)
protective shield that retains mois-
ture and resists oxidation. With the
coating, avocados, apples, limes and
3(7(5$'$0652=(7 7(5$*2

cucumbers have a longer shelf life,

without plastic wrappers.
Apeel-treated produce is now avail-
able in grocery chains in the U.S. and
Europe, including Walmart, Costco,
Kroger and ShopRite. The company has
forged partnerships in eight countries
and recently raised funds to expand in
Africa, Asia and Latin America. —m.g.

NEWSWEEK.COM 47
Master of
the Metaverse
DAVID BASZUCK
magine a world in
which you can be anyone
you want—a superhero, a
rock star, a science fiction monster or
an angel. You can play games or meet
up with friends. You can go anywhere
in this world in an instant. You can
live your fantasies. At least until your
mother yells to turn off the computer
and come to dinner.
That’s the metaverse—a virtual
reality online world defined, in part,
by a computer engineer named David
Baszucki and the company he started,
Roblox Corp. Baszucki didn’t invent
the metaverse (the word was coined
by novelist Neal Stephenson in 1992),
but Roblox says it attracts 47 million
active users each day from around the
world—mostly children, who spent 11
billion hours there over three months
last summer. Mark Zuckerberg of
Facebook says the metaverse is the
future; in October he renamed his
48 NEWSWEEK.COM
KI — CEO, ROBLOX
company Metaa Platforms. Microsoft
is moving in as well.
Baszucki is years
y ahead of them.
“We’re creatiing a platform where
people don’t just play, but they’re
starting to learn together, work to-
gether, experience entertainment to-
gether,” says Baaszucki via email. “Us-
ers provide the variety—millions and
millions and millions
m of experiences.
And it’s built on
n civility and safety.”
At a confereence for software de-
velopers in Octtober, Baszucki was in-
troduced, and loudly applauded, as
“the one and on nly Builderman.” Buil-
derman was his avatar—the comput-
er-generated ch haracter he created to
represent himself online in the ear-
ly days of Roblox. But Roblox leaves
most of the “bu uilding” to the develop-
ers and the youngsters who use the PLAYFUL
site, much as social
s media sites let TECHNOLOGY
you post your own stuff. There may be THAT’S PUSHING
more than 30 m million different games THE EDGE OF
WHAT’S
POSSIBLE
I L LUSTR AT I O N BY BR I T T S P EN CE R
DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
 on RRoblox, according to RTrack. The
dev elopers design games, stores,
imaginary planets and such, and get
“We’re creating paidd if kids buy subscriptions and
a platform spennd digital currency (“Robux”) on

where people admmission fees or digital merchandise.

Baszucki, 58, schooled at Stanford,
learn together, started an educational software com-
work together, panyy in 1989 with his brother, teach-

experience ing kids basic science. “We saw that

in addition to doing their physics
entertainment hommework, they were building stuff
together.” and creating stuff and watching what
wou uld happen when a car ran into a
buillding,” says Baszucki. That was
the ggerm. He and a small team began
work in 2004 on what is now Roblox.
When COVID hit, Roblox’s pop-
W
ularrity exploded. It became a haven
for kids
k in lockdown. By one estimate,
two out of three children between the
agess of 6 and 16 now have accounts.
Theyy’ve made Baszucki a billionaire.
Iff you log on, through a computer,
gamming console or VR headset, you’ll
findd yourself in what resembles a
vastt, brightly colored video game.
Man ny beginners’ avatars are simple,
like Lego figures, but Roblox provides
tools to make them more elaborate.
Reviiewers generally say the Roblox
metaverse is safe and welcoming but
therre have been cases of hate groups
or seex clubs on the site; the company
says it has a safety team of more than
1,600 working to shut them down.
A broader concern is that as the
metaverse becomes more and more
enticing, the real world—with annoy-
ancees like work, exercise and human
conttact—will seem dreary. Over Hal-
loween weekend, Roblox had a mas-
sive outage, and social media sites
filled with jokes about the horror of
childdren having to go outside and see
eachh other. Baszucki apologized and
said his young users quickly returned.
“Together,” he tells fans, “we are the
archhitects of play.” —n.p.

NEWSWEEK.COM 49

OPPORTUNITIES
IN ESPORTS
“What was most profound about soc-
Prescription
Gaming for ADHD
EDDIE MARTUCCI,
ADAM GAZZALEY, MATT OMERNICK,
FOUNDERS, AKILI INTERACTIVE
$NLOLŠV(QGHDYRU5;LVWKHɿUVWŜDQG
VRIDURQO\ŜYLGHRJDPHDSSURYHG
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DVDPHGLFDOWUHDWPHQWLQWKLVFDVH
IRU$WWHQWLRQGHɿFLWK\SHUDFWLYLW\
EXPANDING
JOHN FAZIO — FOUNDER AND CEO, NERD STREET GAMERS
rowing up, fazio was a
varsity-level soccer player,
which he says helped him
get into college and see the world.
cer to me, though, was how it equal-
ized opportunities for everyone, no
matter their background.”
Now Fazio is aiming to do the same
thing for the burgeoning esports indus-
try, where competitive video gamers
vie for recognition and prize money,
some superstar players earn as much
as top pro athletes and viewership
rivals that of traditional sports. One
big impediment for aspiring gamers:
the expensive equipment required to
practice. “I realized that if competi-
tive video games were going to be the
traditional sports, we had to fix the
access gap in technology,” Fazio says.
Toward that end, Fazio, a software
engineer, built Nerd Street Gamers,
a national network of facilities
that provides affordable access to
high-quality equipment, and hosts
tournaments and training camps. So
far, 200 gamers have gone on from
Nerd Street programming to profes-
sional careers and college scholar-
ships. This year, the company con-
tinues in high-growth mode, raising
$11.5 million to expand its digital es-
ports platform, which offers first-of-
its-kind low-cost access to coaching,
camps and virtual tournaments, and
opening a new 35,000-square-foot
training and tournament esports
GLVRUGHU$'+'LQFKLOGUHQDJHV same type of opportunity equalizer as campus in Philadelphia. —M.G.
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seven years of trials and a handful of
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50 NEWSWEEK.COM
 FUN & GAMERS

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DE C E M BE R 24, 2021 NEWSWEEK.COM 51

52 NEWSWEEK.COM
 INNOVATORS ON THE
VERGE OF MAJOR
BREAKTHROUGHS
Flexible Electronics That Could
Someday Be Part of Your Body
JIE XU — ASSISTANT SCIENTIST, ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY
ust imagine the next
generation of electronics,”
says Jie Xu. “It’s not going
to be rigid anymore. It’s going to be
soft, comfortable. It can even be bio-
compatible, like our tissue or skin.”
From her base at Argonne Nation-
al Laboratory near Chicago, Xu is pio-
neering flexible, skin-like electronics
that could someday transform people’s
lives. Implantable sensors or biochem-
COURTESY OF ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY
ical pumps, assist devices to increase
mobility or support weakened limbs—
all of these could work much better if
not for the tough, sometimes brittle
circuitry they need inside to function.
Think of the circuit boards in com-
puters. Or the wiring for heart pace-
makers, which have been lifesaving to
many people, but also uncomfortable.
They make electronics and biology
seem like opposites. Xu and her col-
“The next
generation of
electronics is
going to be soft,
comfortable.”
leagues are out to change that.
“ The killer applications, in my
mind,” she says, “are technology like
robotics or prosthetics with skin-like,
electronic, functional coverings, and
also soft medical sensors that we
can put on our skin or implant into
our bodies without any immune re-
sponse. That’s going to be the goal.”
Xu, 33, was born in a small town in
China, and says she became fascinated
as a student with the chemistry of very
small things. She says it was a disadvan-
tage to be a girl, but she had the advan-
tage of a very good education. After she
got her Ph.D. in 2014 at Nanjing Univer-
sity, she moved to Stanford in California
to be a postdoctoral researcher. There,
in 2018, she and a team reported they’d
figured out how to make flexible cir-
cuits from polymer semiconductors—
sheets of electronics that kept work-
ing if they were bent, twisted or even
stretched to twice their original size.
Polymers are materials made of
long repeating chains of molecules,
and they’re often pliable. Wool, nylon
and polyester are all polymers. So are
rubber and many plastics. Scientists say
there are myriad possible uses. How
about fingertips for a prosthetic hand
that give the wearer a sense of touch?
Or a flexible smartphone that bends in-
stead of breaking in one’s back pocket
and won’t scare you half to death if you
drop it? There are probably many uses
that no one has thought of yet.
In 2019, Xu and her fellow scien-
tists reported progress on the next
step: finding a way to mass-produce
them using a common manufacturing
process.
Some flexible products are already
on the market, or close to it—wear-
able biosensors to measure your vital
signs, video screens that can be sewn
into fabric, and the first attempts at
folding phones. Xu hopes to improve
manufacturing by using artificial
intelligence to help determine the
best compounds for a particular use,
sorting through the properties of
countless different electronic mate-
rials—which ones are softest, tough-
est, easiest to make, most affordable,
best at conducting electricity and
so forth. It’s far more efficient than
the trial-and-error process human
scientists would have to go through
on their own. Xu says AI-driven lab-
oratories may even be able to speed
the design of materials that are en-
vironmentally friendly, to cut down
on electronic waste, and help map
out the manufacturing process.
Xu insists on sharing credit for the
work. “I would say I can be consid-
ered one of the disruptors, but I was
not alone,” she says. “There have been
40 years of development, of people
making efforts in this field. I am just
one of them.” —n.p.
NEWSWEEK.COM 53
Powering Batteries
With Sweat
AMAY BANDODKAR — ELECTRICAL
AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
PROFESSOR AT NORTH CAROLINA
STATE UNIVERSITY

Tiny computers can do wonderful

things when strapped to your body—
WKLQNVPDUWZDWFKHVɿWQHVVWUDFNHUV
and other wearables—but how to
comfortably, easily and consistently
power these devices without a bulky
battery and the need for constant re-
charging is a challenge. Bandodkar has
come up with a novel idea: Use sweat.
Typically 90 percent of the size
of a wearable device is taken up by
the power source, usually a battery.
Bandodkar got the idea to save space
by using the wearer’s own sweat as
the battery’s electrolyte—the solution

ENDING THE
that supplies the electrical current. He
built a sensor that is four times smaller
and 20 times lighter than other models
that run on conventional batteries. DIGITAL DIVIDE FOR
“By using a person’s own sweat as
the battery’s electrolyte, I was able to LOW-INCOME NEIGHBORHOODS
GHYHORSDWKLQʀH[LEOHEDWWHU\FHOO
which has an energy capacity similar
BRIAN HALL — FOUNDER, NYC MESH
to that of a coin cell battery [the kind
used in watches] but without the
ODWWHUŠVXVHRIWR[LFFKHPLFDOVDQGULJLG
metallic housing,” he says. Bandod- orty-six percent of New York City households that live in
kar has begun testing the sensor and poverty lack broadband internet access. Brian Hall wants
battery but cautions that it will take
to change that. His nonprofit NYC Mesh, a community WiFi ini-
several years to develop the technol-
ogy for consumer products such as tiative, offers an affordable way to circumvent internet service

)520/()7$0$<%$1' 2'.$5,//8675$7,21%<%5,7 763(1&(5

wearable devices. Eventually, he hopes
the technology will prove useful for
implantable medical devices, such
as pacemakers or as heating patches
providers and bring high-speed internet access to underserved
neighborhoods—without harvesting and reselling user data.
Whereas most WiFi services rely on a few access points, or
hotspots, mesh networks use hundreds of smaller nodes, which
collaborate to pass data along. Joining NYC Mesh is free, but
members are encouraged to donate $20 to $60 per month, if
they can. The initiative is still small—about 600 buildings are
hooked up—but Hall says it’s the largest community-owned net-
work in the Americas and hopes it will inspire others to “take
back control of their internet connection.” This year the city
awarded NYC Mesh a contract to outfit housing developments
in the Bronx and Crown Heights, Brooklyn with mesh routers,
to bring the city a step further in closing its digital divide. —m.g.

DE C E M BE R 24, 2021
 B UD D IN G DISRU PTORS
Creating Empathetic
Technology
RANA EL KALIOUBY
CO-FOUNDER, CEO, AFFECTIVA;
DEPUTY CEO, SMART EYE
Computers are smart but fall short when
it comes to understanding human emo-
tions. El Kaliouby’s work entails teaching
computers to understand complex
emotions and cognitive states. This new
DQGIDVWPRYLQJɿHOGGXEEHG(PRWLRQ
$,SURPLVHVWRWUDQVIRUPWKHZD\ZH
interact with technology.
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and feeling isolated from her family back
home. “All the nuances and richness
of my feelings were disappearing in
F\EHUVSDFHŤVKHVD\Vţ7KHQFDPHWKH
‘aha’ moment: What would it take to get
our technologies and our devices to
understand us in the same way that we
XQGHUVWDQGRQHDQRWKHU"Ť+HUFRPSDQ\
Affectiva leverages a database of nearly
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ing computers identify users’ feelings
EHKLQGWKHLUVPLUNVIURZQVDQGVPLOHV
Among its applications: Affectiva’s tech
was used by neuroscience augment-
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smart glasses that help children with
autism read facial expressions.
,Q0D\$IIHFWLYDZDVDFTXLUHG
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tracking technology company. The two
companies are developing consumer
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is left behind in a car. El Kaliouby says
she is “on a mission to humanize tech-
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Using Diamonds
ffor Internet Access
FELIX EJECKAM
FOUNDER AND CEO,
AKASH SYSTEMS
efore launching his start-up akash systems in 2016, ejeckam was
head of Defense and Aerospace at Element Six. There he made and sold
gallium nitride-on-diamond wafers, a semiconductor material used in automo-
tives and power supplies for wind and solar farms. Beyond its use as expensive
jewelry, diamond is nature’s most thermally conductive material. At Akash
Systems, Ejeckam grows synthetic diamonds in a lab to use the same gallium
nitride-on-diamond technology for a new purpose: internet connection.
Ejeckam says the company’s satellite radios can deliver ubiquitous internet ac-
cess for less than $5 a month, compared to the $100 to $150 typical for high-inter-
net access on mobile phones now. The first diamond-powered satellites are sched-
uled to launch next year; Ejeckam says the first users will be those living in rural
areas, sea travelers and people flying over international waters. Backstage Capital
founder and Akash investor, Arlan Hamilton, says, “There’s a lot of talk about
billionaires shooting things out into space, but Felix is doing the work.” —M.G.
3D-PRINTED
HOUSING
JASON BALLARD
CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, ICON
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NEWSWEEK.COM 55
Culture

P A R T I NG SHOT

Olivia Colman
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In both roles, you’re forced to

tap into some heavy emotions.
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6 V i s it Ne w s w e e k .c om f o r t h e f u l l int e r v i e w