FEATURE/Want to Meet the Country's Cutting-Edge Scientists? Popular Science Announces First Annual Awards: The `PopSci Brilliant 10'.

Feature Editors/Science Writers

FEATURE...

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 7, 2002

Magazine Recognizes an Elite, Little-Known Group in Its November Issue

Popular Science magazine will debut the "PopSci Brilliant 10," a new editorial annual awards section, in its November issue, Editor-in-Chief Scott Mowbray announced today. The "Brilliant 10," which will hit newsstands next week, is a celebration of an elite group of young scientists who are shaking up their fields and whose work will touch all facets of life.

"Science is made dramatic and relevant by the incredible people behind it," said Mowbray. "The men and women in our first annual list are not famous yet, but they are ground-breaking, risk-taking, maniacally committed researchers. Most are doing work that is ushering in technological advances that will change our lives."

PopSci's "Brilliant 10," in alphabetical order, are:

-- Angela Belcher, 35, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for her work in the field of materials science. Rather than making machines that mimic animals, she is coaxing living creatures to produce machines. Belcher, a pioneer in this field, has engineered viruses that can grow semiconductor materials, microscopic biosensors, and liquid-crystal structures for computer screens or DNA-storage devices. It takes her just three weeks to "evolve" a virus to produce a new substance on its surface.

-- Manjul Bhargava, 28, Princeton University, for his work in the field of mathematics. For his Ph.D., which he earned last year, Bhargava extended some work of the legendary 19th-century German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, work that forms the basis of modern algebraic number theory. He recently found a proof for the Fifteen Theorem that was not only simpler than past proofs but that also expanded the result so that it applied to the generation of any specific set of integers -- such as all the odd numbers.

-- Raphael Bousso, 31, Harvard University, for his work in the field of physics. Bousso is using the most intricate physics to prove that the world isn't as complicated as scientists previously believed. He is one of the leading proponents of a controversial idea called the holographic principle, which, if true, would provide an important clue to how space, time, information, and the laws of physics are intertwined at the most fundamental level.

-- David Clemmer, 37, Indiana University, for his work in the field of chemistry. Recently, scientists decoded the human genome, but the real task still lies ahead: understanding the body's proteins, which do all the heavy lifting. Clemmer has invented an instrument that can separate, sort, sift, and measure biological molecules with a speed and precision that was once unimaginable. The instrument is a key to the early effort to study the almost incalculably complex functions of proteins.

-- Linda Griffith, 42, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for her work in the field of tissue engineering. Most recently, Griffith made a miniature "liver" on a silicon chip and is working with the government to develop it into a practical tool that, placed in soldiers' uniforms, would detect chemical and biological warfare agents. Griffith's work is at the crossroads of biology and engineering; the discipline she's helping forge envisions the body as an ever-improvable product.

-- Zoltan Haiman, 31, Princeton University, for his work in the field of cosmology. In his models, Haiman is exploring the first object to appear in the universe after its chaotic beginnings in the big bang. He uses clues -- what the universe looks like now, the gases known to have been circulating after the big bang, and the unchanging laws of physics -- to model the objects that would have formed when the universe was just a billion years old.

-- Lydia Kavraki, 35, Rice University, for her work in the field of computer science. Kavraki began by studying how robots navigate: She created a system that randomly samples the range of poses open to the robot, creates snapshots of the machine in motion at various stages along its path, and then connects those snapshots as efficiently as possible into a kind of road map. Currently, she is looking for ways to model biological molecules to aid in the hunt for new medicines.

-- Charles Lieber, 43, Harvard University, for his work in the field of nanotechnology. Lieber seeks to manipulate the structure of materials at the molecular level, where they exhibit unique properties. He is among the leading researchers who are actually building things at the nanometer -- billionth of a meter -- scale, from molecules created in the lab, and demonstrating their properties.

-- Azadeh Tabazadeh, 37, NASA Ames Research Center, for her work in the field of atmospheric science. Nearly a decade ago, Azadeh Tabazadeh helped demolish the claim that human activity wasn't destroying the ozone layer, and her work helped pave the way for a landmark 1996 ban on CFC manufacturing. She is one of the first scientists to make the connection between ozone depletion and global warming.

-- David Wagner, 28, University of California, Berkeley, for his work in the field of cryptography. Wagner has broken more than a few codes in his ongoing research to identify security holes in software, particularly software that safeguards large amounts of money or information relevant to national security. Wagner does lots of behind-the-scenes work, advising government agencies and software companies on how to make digital cell phones, wireless networks, encryption standards and next-generation Internet protocols more secure.

(For a full profile of each of the scientists and his or her research, go to popsci.com.)

The search for the Brilliant 10 was methodical: Editors of Popular Science reached out to university department heads, academic think tanks, and award-giving organizations. "We searched for people who are causing a stir within their disciplines, the ones whose colleagues whisper about them with that special envy reserved for the halls of academe," said Features Editor Emily Laber. "The focus is on brilliant work being done and the vision for the road ahead."

Popular Science Properties is a division of Time4 Media(TM), the world's leading publisher of leisure-time magazines. Founded in 1872, Popular Science is the world's largest science and technology magazine with a circulation of 1.45 million subscribers and a readership of more than seven million people. Time4 Media(TM)is a subsidiary of Time, Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL Time Warner, Inc. (NYSE: AOL).