Jason Fried thinks deeply about collaboration, productivity and the nature of work. He's the co-founder of 37signals, makers of Basecamp and other web-based collaboration tools, and co-author of "Rework."
At MIT, Hugh Herr builds prosthetic knees, legs and ankles that fuse biomechanics with microprocessors to restore (and perhaps enhance) normal gait, balance and speed.
New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly tackles global issues with humor, intelligence and sarcasm. Her latest project supports the United Nations initiative Cartooning For Peace.
Kitchen-sized fish farms, living air purifiers and devices that turn old water bottles into martini shakers all spring from the form-and-function-fusing mind of designer Mathieu Lehanneur.
Stuart Oda is an indoor urban farmer with a passion for innovation and sustainability. His goal: democratize access to fresh and nutritious food by democratizing the means and knowledge of production.
Researcher Lisa Mosconi studies the brains of living patients with cutting-edge brain-imaging technology -- and uses the data to understand how brain health plays out differently in women than in men.
Physicist Garrett Lisi has proposed a new "theory of everything" -- a grand unified theory that explains all the elementary particles, as well as gravity.
A powerful thinker and globe-trotting advisor on sustainability, Louise Fresco says it's time to think of food as a topic of social and economic importance on par with oil -- that responsible agriculture and food consumption are crucial to world stability.