KIM B. BLAIR, PhD
" I often say to my students when they come in with a great idea, 'You've got to do your homework, you've got to understand how to get your product out there to the consumer, or you're just doing a science experiment.'"

User-centered product development is critical in the mind of Kim Blair, an aerospace engineer turned sports technologist. Founder of MIT's Center for Sports Innovation (CSI), Blair works at the crossroads of materials science, aerodynamics and marketing. He and his students have designed everything from sleeker bobsleds to safer climbing equipment to sneakers with drainage holes in the bottom for ultramarathoners who complain about running in wet shoes. Generating and harvesting ideas is phase one in the innovation process, according to Blair. But bringing inventions to the marketplace requires thinking "like the customer." At times, Blair acts as his own test case. Himself a runner in search of the perfect shoe for the marathon phase of triathlons, Blair helped student Chi-An Wang shape her concept for triathlon footwear by surveying marathoners and other potential users. Boston-based sneaker-maker New Balance produced a prototype, then a production model based on Wang's final design for an elastic sling-back shoe with easy handgrips and good ventilation.

Blair predicts the continuing evolution of lighter, tougher materials in sport products and the advent of wearable devices that give athletes instant feedback on such measures as their salt output and blood sugar levels.

Robert S. Langer, PhD
From spine grafts in paraplegic rats to self-tying knots used in minimally invasive surgery, the leitmotiv of Robert Langer's protean productivity is combining engineering principles with biology to create ideas that will "relieve suffering and prolong life."

As a young graduate working in a surgery laboratory, Robert Langer noticed that clinicians often used household items to create medical materials: sausage casings for dialysis tubing, mattress stuffing for breast implants, polyether urethane (as used in ladies' girdles) for artificial hearts. In his own quest for better biomedical materials, Langer has become one of the most prolific medical inventors in history, with more than 500 patents. His work on localized delivery systems for brain cancer drugs, using dime-sized wafers made of biodegradable polymers implanted in the brain to dispense toxic chemicals in targeted doses, heralded a new era in local chemotherapy. He likens the invention to "a pharmacy on a chip." Professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at MIT, Langer is also founder of the field of tissue engineering-the process of growing and maintaining human tissue in vitro on a biodegradable plastic scaffold-which has produced artificial skin to help burn victims and engineered bone to repair birth defects.

Nawal M. Nour, MD, MPH
"Changing people's ideas is really critical to changing behavior," says Nawal Nour, who has a dual mission. First, to help circumcised women from Africa cope with the effects, and second, to teach health providers around the world how to deal appropriately with the emotional and physical scars left on their patients by the procedure.

Nawal Nour grew up in Sudan where female circumcision is the norm. She was not subjected to it, but delved passionately into the topic as a medical student at Harvard and as an obstetrician at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. In 1999 she piloted the African Women's Health Practice, a first for women dealing with the consequences of ritual circumcision and the only clinic in the US dedicated to the issue. In her role as mediator between cultures, Nour helps health care providers see beyond the visceral Western revulsion at female genital cutting, which most of her patients see as a traditionally sanctioned social practice.

She tells an African fable of a contest between the wind, trying to conquer by force, and the sun, triumphing by spreading warmth and light. A patient, compassionate process of education is needed to end the practice of female genital cutting, she says. In other words, "We need to be more like the sun and less like the wind."

Leonard P. Guarente, PhD
A single gene, regulated by food intake, may hold the key to aging. Soon, humans may reap the benefits of longer, healthier lives without cutting calories, by chemically tricking the gene.

When Leonard Guarente began studying aging, "We already had a clue that aging could be influenced by diet," he says. Mice on calorie-restricted diets remained more active and lived longer than their free-feeding peers. They also escaped the ills to which mice and men are heir, including cancer and cardiovascular disease. After 14 years' research on yeasts and roundworms, Guarente and his team pinpointed one gene, SIR2, that regulates aging in both organisms. He scented a breakthrough: If it worked in yeast and worms, "this ought to play out in mammals, in mice and in people." Also critical was the discovery that the chemical NAD, found in all cells and involved in metabolism, acted as a co-factor with SIR2, suggesting a link between metabolism- and by extension, diet-and genetic changes.

Why would nature have equipped organisms with a biochemical device that retards aging? Guarente hypothesizes that the reasons lie in early evolution. When food supplies were scarce, the operation of SIR2 and NAD helped ensure survival by keeping organisms alive long enough to weather the lean times. He predicts that the use of chemical compounds that mimic the effects of a restricted diet will revolutionize the therapeutics of aging. "What we're really talking about here," he says, "is not so much altering lifespan, but attacking the diseases of aging. I see it not only as something we should do, but as something we're obligated to do."