This week in PopTech: Medical miracles, synthetic biology and making mobile count
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Friday, March 04, 2011 UTC
There’s always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week’s highlights follows.
- Regenerative medicine expert Dr. Stephen Badylak (PopTech 2008) shocked the medical world when two of his patients re-grew severed fingertips in just six weeks. Badylak was recently featured on National Geographic’s Explorer series, in the episode “How to Build a Beating Heart,” where he and his colleagues applied breakthrough solutions to help Iraqi war veterans re-grow tissue and body parts lost in battle. For more on regenerative human cells and tissue through the use of 3D organ printing see our related interview with Dr. Gabor Forgacs.
- Scientist Jay Keasling (PopTech 2007) has already created anti-malarial drugs from yeast. Now he working on using synthetic biology as a replacement for jet fuel and diesel.
- Matt Berg (Social Innovation Fellow 2010) helped create and pilot ChildCount+, a mobile-phone-based health platform that empowers communities in Africa to improve child and maternal health. This week, Berg contributed to Nat Geo’s Newswatch with observations on how mobile data collection is helping include the excluded.
- Planning for SXSW? Don’t miss the panel, Techies Can Save the World, Why Aren’t They?, featuring RecycleMatch founder, Brooke Betts Farrell (Social Innovation Fellow 2010) and Treehugger founder, Graham Hill (PopTech 2010).
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Image: National Geographic
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