Like a modern-day Indiana Jones, Sarah Parcak uses satellite images to locate lost ancient sites. The winner of the 2016 TED Prize, her wish is to protect the world’s shared cultural heritage.
Robert Fischell invented the rechargeable pacemaker, the implantable insulin pump, and devices that warn of epileptic seizures and heart attacks. Yet it's not just his inventive genius that makes him fascinating, but his determination to make the world a better place.
Julia Bacha is the creative director at Just Vision, an organization that uses film and multimedia storytelling to foster constructive conversations on some of the most divisive issues of our times.
Whether she’s inventing satellite radio, developing life-saving drugs or digitizing the human mind, Martine Rothblatt has a knack for turning visionary ideas into commonplace technology.
Gavin McCormick is a cofounder of the Climate TRACE coalition, which combines satellites and artificial intelligence to detect human-caused greenhouse gases from all major sources.
Jay Walker is fascinated by intellectual property in all its forms. His firm, Walker Digital, created Priceline and many other businesses that reframe old problems with new IT. In his private life, he's a bibliophile and collector on an epic scale.
Architect David Rockwell draws on his love of drama and spectacle to create fantastic, high-impact restaurants, cultural facilities, airline terminals, theater sets -- and playgrounds.
Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist John C. Mather leads the science team behind NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope ever launched into space.
Lynn Rothschild is passionate about the origin and evolution of life on earth or elsewhere -- while at the same time pioneering the use of synthetic biology to enable space exploration.
Stephen Lawler and the Virtual Earth team have created an addictively interactive 3D world that is poised to reinvent our view of advertising, gaming, weather/traffic reporting, instant messaging and more.
Astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel Prize winner George Smoot studies the cosmic microwave background radiation -- the afterglow of the Big Bang. His pioneering research into deep space and time is uncovering the structure of the universe itself.