MIT publishes ‘Technology Review‘. It’s editors have selected 10 most important technological milestones reached over the previous 12 months. According to them, the technologies ‘will have the greatest impact on the shape of innovation in years to come. These are breakthroughs with the potential to transform the world.’

But TR35 of MIT is more unique as it selects 35 young scientists of ages below 35 years. Five scientists of Indian origin are in this year’s list. Their works are interesting. Here below are some details of those five scientists and their research areas.

1. Sarbajit Banerjee
Banerji is working to develop A window that changes in response to the heat. ” B­anerjee, a materials chemist at the University at Buffalo in New York, is applying his work on a compound called vanadium oxide to coat glass with a material that makes this possible.Windows block heat—but let it through when you want them.”

2.Shishir Mehrotra
Mehrotra, an MIT math and computer science alum had developed: skippable ads that advertisers would pay for only when people watched them. That would be a radical change from the conventional media model of paying for ad “impressions” regardless of whether the ads are actually viewed, and even from Google’s own pay-per-click model.

3.Pratheev Sreetharan
Mass-producible tiny machines snap into place like objects in a pop-up book
Combining tools used to manufacture printed circuit boards with the spirit of origami, Pratheev Sreetharan has found a way to build tiny machines and complex objects that were previously impossible to fabricate without assembling them manually. Some of the results: a robotic bee created in a day, a tiny, precise icosahedron, and a small chain of interlocking carbon-fiber links. The small, intricate items demonstrate a fundamentally new fabrication approach that ­Sreetharan believes can be broadly applicable in making a range of new medical devices, robots, and components of analytical instruments.

4.Saikat Guha
Saikat Guha is convinced that privacy and profit don’t have to conflict online. The Microsoft Research India computer scientist has developed a software platform that allows advertisers to precisely target potential customers without exposing the customers’ personal information.

5.Prashant Jain
Prashant Jain, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois, has figured out a way to create tunable quantum dots that can be adjusted on the fly. His innovation could be key to designing optical computers and ultra-efficient solar panels.
I wish the government, major companies and institutions encourage their scientists to participate in this competition. However, five out of 35 is not bad.