MacDirectory 23
Synthetic Genomics Inc.,
Co-Founder
Juan Enriquez classifies himself as
a futurist-- He has made a career of
combining science, business, and
society to look ahead. He is the
founding director of the Harvard
Business School Life Science
Project, and formerly served as
chief of staff for Mexico's secretary
of state.
Recently, Enriquez has coauthored
a book titled Homo Evolutis: A
Short Tour of Our New Species, in
which he presents a world shaped
by human influence-- humans
increasingly shaping themselves as
well as their environment.
Says Enriquez in a popular Ted
Talk, "I think we're going to move
from a Homo sapiens into a Homo
evolutis. And I think this isn't 1,000
years out. I think most of us are
going to glance at it, and our
grandchildren are going to begin to
live it."
Surgeon
Anthony Atala is the director of the
Wake Forest Institute of
Regenerative Medicine, where he
focuses on growing and
regenerating tissues and organs.
His team engineered the first
bladder to be implanted into a
human and is developing
technology that can "print" human
tissue on demand.
"Our lab uses a desktop inkjet
printer, but instead of using ink,
we're using cells...You can pop that
structure out of the printer and
implant it."
Interestingly enough, this
technology was first mentioned in
1938 in a book titled, "The Culture
of Organs."
Screen Engineer
Mary Lou Jepsen is the head of the
Display Division at Google X. She
has been ranked in the top 50
female computer scientists of all
time, and Time Magazine inducted
her into its "Time 100" as one of the
100 most influential people in the
world.
Most recently, she has pioneered
research regarding the future of
brain-reading devices at TED2013.
After a number of experiments, she
has been able to establish that
imagining an image has the same
brain pattern as seeing it.
"Can you imagine," she asks, "a
movie director using her imagination
alone to direct the world in front of
her?"
She reveals that the biggest challenge
is simply to increase the resolution
of brain-scan systems, an effort that
the White House has announced
support for just this year.
FACES: WHO IS MAKING AN IMPACT IN THE WORLD TODAY? BY ANDREA DE LEON
Juan Enriquez
Anthony Atala Mary Lou Jepsen
DePARtMent
