June 2002

2002 TR100

Continued from page 3

By Technology Review

In November 1999, we named the members of the first TR100. And a remarkable group they were-brilliant, creative, and out to change the world. They still are.

For many of the 1999 TR100, commercialization of their innovations and scientific advances has been a primary concern over the last several years. It's been a challenging job, especially given the rapidly changing technology market. The dot-com mania, at its peak in 1999, has long since subsided; wireless and telecommunications markets are sluggish. But research in biotechnology, nanotechnology and information technology is exploding. And many of the original TR100 continue to show a remarkable ability to aggressively turn that research into real technologies.

Take Peter Seeberger. A professor of chemistry at MIT, Seeberger was chosen to the 1999 TR100 for his innovative work in the esoteric field of carbohydrate biochemistry. Then, at the awards ceremony, he met another young innovator, fellow honoree Carmichael Roberts, cofounder of Brighton, MA-based Surface Logix, a drug discovery startup. Their ensuing collaboration culminated in the formation of Ancora Pharmaceuticals to commercialize carbohydrate-based vaccines. This spring, Seeberger and an Australian biologist he met through Roberts are collaborating on groundbreaking research that could lead to the first effective vaccine against malaria, a disease that plagues five to 10 percent of the world's population, killing two million every year.

David Clemmer is another 1999 TR100 member who still has high ambitions. Last October, he shipped his life's work from his lab at Indiana University to Waltham, MA, and a small startup called Beyond Genomics, where he is a founding scientific advisor. The company is the first in a new discipline called systems biology, and Clemmer's invention, a novel lab instrument to automate the process of taking chemical snapshots of living cells, is the linchpin of its business plan. The goal: to better understand the biological processes behind human neurology and find a cure for diseases such as Alzheimer's and schizophrenia.

Tejal Desai, a researcher in tiny machines used for drug delivery and diagnostics, says "the TR100 raised the visibility" of her fledgling field. "Before that, no one was paying much attention." A rising star in the hot new field, Desai left the University of Illinois at Chicago in January 2002 to become an associate professor at Boston University. Meanwhile, Columbus, OH-based iMedd is working to commercialize an insulin release capsule that Desai developed; human tests are scheduled to begin soon.

Even for some named to the original TR100 for their innovations in information technology and the Internet, the growing opportunities in biotech have been too tempting to ignore. Adam Beberg, an expert in using networks of linked PCs for distributed computing, made his reputation breaking encryption codes. Now Beberg is using the same distributed-computing tools to help crack some of biotech's biggest problems: understanding how proteins fold into their final three-dimensional shapes and how genes code for proteins. Tens of thousands of PCs around the world, which together offer more computational power than supercomputers, are now joined in Folding@home and Genome@home, thanks to Beberg and his collaborators at Stanford University (including 2001 honoree Vijay Pande).

The Internet business has not exactly been smooth sailing during the last few years, but even in those rough waters, some TR100 members have managed to flourish. Marc Andreessen, for one, has not lost his magic touch. One of the founders of Netscape, Andreessen cofounded startup Loudcloud in September 1999 to outsource Internet services. In March 2001, Loudcloud went public and raised $150 million, braving a disastrous climate for Internet investments.

Others tied to the "new economy" haven't fared as well. In 1999, Michael Saylor and his company, MicroStrategy, were riding high. Saylor had a grand vision for his Internet software; he called it "query tone," and TR's 1999 profile said it "would make it possible to answer any question you might have, in the form you want it, quickly and reliably." Unfortunately, there were a few financial questions that the company couldn't answer. In March 2000, MicroStrategy was forced to "restate" its recent financial records; as a result, the company's stock price dropped 140 points in a day, losing 62 percent of its value. But Saylor has survived. The slimmed-down McLean, VA-based software company now thrives by selling data-mining software for corporations. "Two years ago, we were in several different lines of business," Saylor says. "Today we are in one."

For others, the Internet roller coaster has been a bit less dramatic. Open-source software guru Miguel de Icaza was named not only a member of the TR100 but also TR's innovator of the year in 1999 for his leadership of GNOME, an effort to create an easy-to-use, open-source graphical interface for Linux. De Icaza cofounded Boston, MA-based Ximian in October 1999 to create software products for GNOME users and has continued carrying the open-source banner. Most notably, de Icaza has led an effort to develop Mono, an open-source alternative to Microsoft's .Net software for Web-based applications.

The Internet was not the only tech sector to suffer hard hits since the first TR100. Telecom and networking saw their prospects rise and fall. Wim Sweldens was one of the survivors, joining the management ranks at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs. As a director of research, he's now playing a major role in managing what's arguably the world's most talented technical corps. That's not to say his own research days are over. During the last two years, Sweldens has continued to publish seminal work on compression algorithms.

In 1999, Steven Jurvetson, managing director of San Francisco-based Draper Fisher Jurvetson, was an outspoken proponent of e-commerce. Now he has turned his attention to nanotech, becoming chairman of the NanoBusiness Alliance and investing in several nanotech startups. "Nanotech represents the natural culmination of a number of technology trends," suggests Jurvetson.

Joseph Jacobson is one of those technologists out to prove Jurvetson right. In 1999, Jacobson was best known as cofounder of E Ink, a company commercializing paperlike electronic displays. Now Jacobson, director of the NanoMedia group at MIT's Media Lab, is well into his next project. His lab recently used radio waves and nanoscale antennae to control strands of DNA. Jacobson is optimistic that the technique can be used to improve disease diagnosis and drug delivery. In October 2000, he cofounded engeneOS in Waltham, MA, to develop the technology. Jacobson, a veteran when it comes to commercializing radical innovations, is under no illusions concerning what it takes to get products to market. "It's hard work. Instant success doesn't happen."

Erik Winfree, a Caltech professor who specializes in DNA computing, Hideo Mabuchi, a physicist at Caltech and pioneer in quantum computing, and Daniel Schrag, a geochemist at Harvard University, all won MacArthur Fellowships in 2000. The coveted "genius grants" give the researchers $500,000 each with "no strings attached" over five years.

Winfree, for one, reports that "progress is slow" in his efforts to learn how to use DNA molecules as the basic elements in computing. But then, no one said changing the world would be easy.