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Meet the Innovators

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  Van Phillips, prosthetics designer

  Van Phillips created a revolutionary business, Flex-Foot, maker of prosthetic feet and lower limbs. The business has helped disabled people around the world live normal, active lives. When he was a 21-year-old college student, a motorboat ran into him while he was water skiing, severing his leg just above the ankle. He ended up wearing prosthetic limbs that were stiff and clumsy. His frustration led him to the study of prosthetics.

  While working at the University of Utah, Phillips met Dale Abildskov, an aerospace composite engineer. Phillips developed an initial design, derived from studying the shape of a cheetah’s hind leg, and, with Abildskov’s help, began building a prototype using carbon fiber material. It eventually evolved into an L-shaped foot that springs into action when weight is applied.

  In 1994, Phillips found Flex-Foot Inc., with Abildskov and two other partners. His products were tested by the Paralympics and were praised for flexibility. Phillips’s Flex-Foot is manufactured by the Ossur Company and sold as “Cheetahs.” Currently, more than 90 percent of the Paralympian athletes use them. Many other amputees rely on his invention to lead active lives.

  Phillips, who has more than 100 U.S. and international patents, has been awarded the Brian Blatchford Memorial prize from the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics. He founded the Second Wind Foundation, in 1999, to help amputees around the world by providing inexpensive and virtually indestructible prostheses.

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  Babak Parviz, researcher

  Working on the frontiers of electrical engineering, physics, chemistry, material science, mechanical engineering and nanobiotechnology, Babak Parviz and his international team of researchers design contact lenses with electronic circuits built into them, electromechanical devices that assemble themselves and microtools that monitor human health and dispense medicines.
  
  Parviz was born in Tehran, Iran, and earned his first degree from Sharif University before coming to the United States to further his education. After earning master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan, he joined Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology as a postdoctoral research fellow in 2001 before taking a faculty position with the University of Washington in Seattle. He has won prizes for work on genomic research, a Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Michigan and the Kharazmi Award for design of a single-engine airplane, among other prizes. In 2007, he picked up a National Science Foundation award for early career development and an award for young innovators from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology magazine Technology Review. Both awards were for his groundbreaking work in using the properties of differing components to get them to assemble themselves into microelectromechanical devices.
  
  Apart from science, Parviz takes a keen interest in American literature and, according to his Web site, “has some unsubstantiated claims about soccer [football] skills.

  Related article: Iranian-American Researcher Explores Technology Frontiers in U.S. Return to Top
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  Mathias Craig, renewable energy entrepreneur

  Mathias Craig created a U.S.-based nonprofit company, blueEnergy, which is developing a model for low-cost, sustainable electrification of remote rural communities. The model can be replicated around the world.

  The blueEnergy system is a hybrid of solar and wind technology. The solar panels provide the power on calm, clear days, while the wind turbine generates power on cloudy, rainy days, which tend to be windy.

  Craig came up with the idea for blueEnergy while he was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a class project, he had to develop a business plan for a product or service that would help the world’s poor. His plan -- an early version of blueEnergy -- won in the global markets category in the MIT business plan competition that year. “It was a small prize, but it gave me the nod of approval that I needed to continue working on it afterward.”

  By the end of 2007, the company had installed eight of its systems in six Nicaraguan communities, with an estimated number of 1,500 beneficiaries.

  
  
  blueEnergy won the 2007 Accenture Economic Development Award given by San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation.
  Related article: Rural Nicaraguan Areas Are Model for Electrification System Return to Top
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  Sharon Rogone

  Sharon Rogone started out as a nurse in the intensive care unit for newborns in San Bernardino, California. A lot of what the nurses were doing was redesigning or creating makeshift equipment for premature infants. Rogone saw the need for products that would assist these infants in their first weeks of life. She started designing neonatal equipment specifically for preemies.
  
  Her first invention was the Bili-Bonnet, which protects a newborn baby’s eyes from the very bright lights used for phototherapy in the treatment of jaundice. Before that, nurses had been improvising eye shields for the infants from black construction paper, cotton balls and other materials. To market this product, Rogone created Small Beginnings in the mid-1990s. Started in her home, Small Beginnings is now a successful company that markets more than a dozen innovative products worldwide, such as specialized diapers, pacifiers, oral suction tools and bolsters to position a baby comfortably in the incubator. These products improve the health of premature infants, while cutting the length of their hospital stays and thus reducing costs. Sharon Rogone has been able to help thousands of infants through her innovative products.

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  Chad Hurley and Steve Chen

  Chad Hurley and Steve Chen got the idea for YouTube after they had trouble sharing some videos from a party over the Internet. Since there was no simple medium to share these videos, they created one. Together with Jawed Karim, they founded YouTube in 2005. YouTube is a video-sharing Web site, where registered users can upload an unlimited number of video clips. By 2006, viewers were watching over 100 million videos per day on YouTube. In the fall of 2006, Google, a company famous for its innovative online search engine, purchased YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars worth of Google shares.
  
  Hurley, born in 1977, grew up in Pennsylvania and received his B.A. in Fine Arts from Indiana University in Pennsylvania. He moved to California to work for PayPal, a company that helps facilitate and secure online transactions. Working at PayPal, he met Taiwan-born Chen, 29, and German-born Bangladeshi Karim.
  
  Hurley and Chen continue to run YouTube. Hurley is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Steve is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Karim recently launched Youniversity Ventures to help current and former students realize their business ideas.
  
  YouTube, started as an entertainment tool, was recently used to broadcast questions to presidential candidates in the CNN-YouTube Presidential Debates and is also becoming an important educational tool.
  
  Related articles: University Channels on YouTube Offer Educational Videos
  YouTube Redefines Terms of Presidential Debates

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  David Berry, engineer

  David Berry has explored therapeutic medicine, diagnostic devices and alternative energy technologies since he received his bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He helped develop a method to treat stroke, devised a new approach to cancer therapy and created a system to genetically engineer microbes to produce biofuels. In 2005, at the age of 27, he was awarded a doctorate degree by the MIT Biological Engineering Division and a year later earned a doctorate of medicine at Harvard University.

  Since 2005, Berry has been a principal in the venture capital firm Flagship Ventures in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he works with several biotechnology companies, with a particular focus on LS9 Inc., a privately held company that focuses on the development of biofuels. He has led a LS9 effort to coax microorganisms to produce clean, cost-competitive equivalents of crude oil, diesel, gasoline or hydrocarbon-based industrial chemicals. He designed a system that turns microorganisms into microrefineries able to convert cellulose-derived glucose into such products.

  This technology has “game-changing potential,” according to Berry.

  He has received more than 20 awards and honors and has 21 patent applications pending. He was named the Young Innovator of the Year (an award given to innovators under age 35) in 2007 by Technology Review, a magazine published by MIT.

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  Deborah Bial, educator

  A winner of an award from the McArthur Fellows Program (commonly known as a “genius grant”) for 2007, Deborah Bial has developed a new set of tools to identify public high school students who exhibit promise but typically have not been regarded as “top-college material.”

  Based on a student’s comment that he never would have dropped out of college if he’d had his “posse” with him, Bial started the Posse Foundation to identify public secondary school students who exhibit extraordinary leadership potential but might be overlooked by traditional college admissions processes. These students are recruited and trained to form “posses” -- multicultural peer groups that encourage each member’s academic achievements.

  Posse candidates are selected through a rigorous assessment process that emphasizes qualities such as leadership, teamwork, motivation and communication skills. Posse has developed partnerships with dozens of highly selective liberal arts colleges and universities, not only giving these students greater access to higher education, but also helping these schools broaden the diversity of their student body.

  To date, the Posse program has placed 2,200 students in colleges and universities.  These students have won more than $220 million in scholarships from Posse partner universities. The Posse Foundation states that its students are graduating from colleges and universities at a rate of 90 percent, higher than the national average.

  Additional information is available on the Posse Foundation Web site.

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  Michael Callahan, engineer

  Michael Callahan, born in 1982, was a graduate student in engineering at the University of Illinois when he developed an innovative technology that intercepts neurological signals sent by the brain to the vocal cords and translates them into synthesized speech or commands.  This human-computer interface, called the Audeo, enables severely disabled people to control a wheelchair or to communicate.

  The Audeo uses sensors located in a neckband worn by the user to detect the instruction signals sent by the brain and relay them to a computer that converts them into words and sentences or wheelchair directions.

  Callahan and Thomas Coleman, another engineering student, co-founded Ambient Corporation to commercialize the technology for use by disabled people such as those suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), stroke, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, or cervical spinal cord injuries.  The technology is being tested at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and elsewhere. The first Audeo speech device is scheduled to become commercially available in 2008. 

  Callahan received a master’s degree in systems and entrepreneurial engineering from the University of Illinois. He was instrumental in instituting a Student Entrepreneur Learning Lab in the university’s Technology Entrepreneur Center.  The lab provides students with the equipment needed to pursue their product and innovation ideas.

  Related article: Device Converts Brain Signals into Spoken Words Return to Top
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  Adrian Chernoff, engineer and designer

  A self-described “engineer, a futurist, a designer, and a visionary,” Adrian Chernoff is the chief creative officer for Ideation Genesis, an exploratory and idea development firm, where he works in such diverse areas as space and underwater transportation, vehicle concepts, home electronics, Web projects, garden tools, science fiction and children’s books and office supplies.

  Prior to Ideation Genesis, Chernoff was the principal inventor for General Motors Corporation’s Reinvention of the Automobile project. Over a period of six years, he participated in the development of many concept vehicles for General Motors.

  Chernoff also has generated ideas, built teams and managed innovation for Walt Disney (theme parks), Sandia National Laboratories (advanced technology), NASA (space exploration), Diageo (beverages), Magna (automotive), Staples (office supplies), Alcoa (aluminum products), Warner Music Group (music) and Gucci (jewelry).

  Chernoff holds 67 patents in various areas. His inventions come in all form and sizes. One of the most popular and (deceptively) simple is his Rubber Bandits -- a rubber band with a tear-resistant label used to hold together stacks or rolls of papers, bunches of small objects, wires, etc. The invention won Chernoff a Staples competition and is sold in the office supply chain’s more than 1,400 stores in the United States and Canada.

  Related article: Hyperefficient, Supersafe Car Envisioned by Group Return to Top
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  Matt and Jessica Flannery, financiers

  With his wife Jessica, Matt Flannery, 30, co-founded a nonprofit organization Kiva.org, which applies a people-to-people model to make small loans to individuals seeking to establish their own businesses in developing countries.

  Kiva, which means "unity" or "agreement" in Swahili, is “all about connecting people” and “connecting lenders with microbusinesses online,” Matt Flannery wrote in his blog, “The Kiva Chronicles.”

  Kiva raises money from investors in more than 70 countries via the Internet and turns that money over to 69 partner microfinance institutions (MFIs) in 37 countries. Through the Kiva Web site, investors can direct funds to the loan pool for specific borrowers. Partner MFIs must have a history of lending “to poor, excluded and/or vulnerable people for the purpose of alleviating poverty.”

  Kiva refers to its lenders as “social investors.” They receive no interest on the money they lend. The MFIs lend at prevailing interest rates and keep the interest income. Losses, Kiva said, are borne by the social investor, not the MFI.

  Kiva did not invent microfinance -- the supply of loans, savings and other small-scale financial services to the poor -- but its online marketplace for lenders and borrowers has led to explosive growth of more than 30 percent per month since the Web site’s founding in 2005. Based on the recommendations of an international panel of judges, the Tech Museum of Innovation presented Kiva with an economic development award November 7, 2007, at a ceremony in San Jose, California.

  Related article: Web Site Offers Microloans to Borrowers Worldwide Return to Top
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  Ramon Gonzalez, educator

  Educators from across the United States have been flocking to Gonzalez' Laboratory School of Finance and Technology, which he established at Middle School 223 in the South Bronx in 2003, to see how he improves underprivileged youngsters' lives.

  His idea for a finance and technology theme in the school came out of research on urban gangs while he was in college.  Gang members have entrepreneurial skills but cannot get jobs because of their prison records, he concluded.  Instead, they become illicit retailers, dealing in drugs, protection -- "a whole underground economy."

  Polling his students, he found that what they wanted to learn was how to make money and how to use computers, a desire that led to his finance and technology laboratory school, which equips its graduates to build careers in financial services and tech support.  Gonzalez is familiar with the obstacles his kids must overcome. Gonzalez says he loves his "job because everyday we get to change lives."

  He grew up in an East Harlem tenement in New York City with six brothers and sisters.  His father, a Vietnam War veteran, had a heroin addiction, served time in prison and died of AIDS.

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  Concetta M. Tomaino, music therapist

  Trained in musical performance (she plays the trumpet), psychology and science, Concetta M. Tomaino has done groundbreaking research on the uses of music in the neurological rehabilitation of patients living with the effects of autism, dementia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases as well as stroke and trauma.

  Clinical studies conducted by Tomaino and her colleagues, especially Dr. Oliver Sacks, a British neurologist and author of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, have shown that singing word phrases such as “Hello, how are you?” affects speech recovery by “rehearsing” speech.

  Singing and speaking are neurologically different functions, Tomaino said. For example, stroke victims sometimes can sing entire lyrics of songs but are unable to speak a simple “hello.” By putting regular speech and common phrases into a musical context, patients who have trouble speaking but are conscious and cognizant of what is being said to them are learning to say “hello” and more.

  Tomaino helped lay the groundwork for the creation of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function at Beth Abraham Family Health Services in New York, where she is the director and vice-president for music therapy.

  Related article: Music Therapy Helps People with Disabilities Return to Top