Six Young People Who Are Making a Splash in Technology Today to Change the Future

May 22, 2019 – It has been a recent revelation to me that 21st Century Tech blog is getting greater notice in the blogosphere and Internet. I continue to receive requests by writers to publish their posts on this site and am finding that I am being more selective these days in accepting proposed content. I’m happy to say for the most part that the quality of the submissions remain excellent whether it is the topics chosen or the writing. So for those of you who are aspiring futurists and writers, I invite you to send me content you feel is a fit for this site. Include a short biography so that I can promote you through this site. All submissions of this kind will be subject to editorial review and I hope when published will represent you to the best of your abilities.

This posting is courtesy of Kayleigh Alexandra, a writer and campaign designer for MicroStartups, a website focused on the charity world and microbusinesses. With years of experience in the sustainability, marketing, and creative industries, Kayleigh knows how to grow and build a business from scratch. Visit her blog or follow her on Twitter @getmicrostarted for the latest startup and entrepreneur-based news, tips, and advice.

It’s natural to wonder about what the future will bring. Whether you’re interested in the unpredictable but relentless force of technological advances, or the long-term prospects of generational shifts, you’re inevitably invested in what’s yet to come. 

It’s particularly captivating to consider how the nascent technologies of the future which we can see today, being developed, refined and implemented by young people and marvel at what will be achieved by them in the decades to come.

Lacking a crystal ball (or suitable predictive algorithm) to see what lies ahead, we still can get some inkling about the future by looking at what’s already being achieved in technological innovation.

In this posting we use a representative sample of six young people who are, no doubt, making a splash that will reverberate over time. 

Shubham Banerjee

Accessibility has become a major concern across all types of industry, and technology offers new ways to improve experiences for those with disabilities. When he was just 12, Shubham Banerjee, seen in the picture above, noticed that Braille printers were expensive to the point of being unaffordable to most blind people. Consequently, this young Belgian used Lego Mindstorms to invent a budget-friendly alternative which he calls Braigo. In the five years since he built the printer, now 17, he has received venture capital funding from Intel and used the money to expand the company to provide other services for the visually impaired, most recently an application to allow people to print and share Braille documents. He working on his original invention, the Braigo printer, enhancing its capabilities.

Harry Keen

Harry Keen, age 28, and one of the Forbes’ 30 under 30 in Europe, has a background in machine learning which he has used to create Hazy, a software company with a focus on addressing Internet privacy and security.

Today, Internet users sacrifice anonymity for increased convenience. The result is potential data exposure should a breach occur. The implementation of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) by different jurisdictions is forcing merchants and SaaS companies to develop privacy policies and safeguards to assure their customers’ data cannot be hijacked.

Hazy is a software system that anonymizes the massive amounts of Internet data so that it can be safely used for analysis and manipulation. It replaces unnecessary elements of personal data in digital processes with synthetic data which ensures privacy and protects user identity details from hackers.

Recently Hazy was awarded a Microsoft AI innovation prize worth $1 million. The company in 2018 successfully raised an additional $1.8 million of new venture capital.

Vibin Joseph

Vibin Joseph is a 31-year-old mechanical engineer who is a graduate of the Imperial College London, and currently the Executive Director of Bangalore-based BiOZEEN, a biomedical company focused on making vaccines more affordable. The company’s technology today is responsible for the manufacturing of vaccines given to 1 in every 3 children globally. The issue of safe and effective immunization has become far more visible in the presence of recurrences of illnesses long thought to have been eradicated in the public domain. Measles is just one in a number of diseases that because of the anti-vaxxer movement have put millions at risk. 

BiOZEEN’s mission is to produce automated bioprocess manufacturing solutions for creating life-saving immunizations to stop preventable deaths from happening through the use of an open source platform of both hardware and software combined with the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to create a biomedical standard for companies around the world to deliver more affordable vaccines.

Rainier Mallol

Twenty-five-year-old Rainier Mallol is the founder of AIME, Artificial Intelligence in Medical Epidemiology, a software solution that combines medical best practises with AI to predict disease outbreaks. A finalist in the Forbes Top 40 World Changers of 2015, AIME has a predictive model accuracy of 86.37% in determining where the next likely pandemic will occur.

AIME is currently focused on three mosquito-borne diseases: dengue, Zika, and chikungunya. The system works by analyzing historical records and comparing them to current outbreaks to come up with a longer-term forecast. This level of precision is far in advance of any previous effort to forecast disease outbreaks.

AIME is currently working with Brazil, the Philippines, and the state government of Penang in Malaysia.

Carlos Pierre

With home ownership rates wavering as populations age, wages stagnate, and the cost of buying getting harder to justify, many are choosing shared rental accommodation. When you don’t know people to live with, it can be tricky to arrange. That’s what gave 29-year-old Carlos Pierre the idea for Badi, an AI-based software application that uses machine learning to bring potential roommates as well as tenants and landlords together.

Pierre first thought of the idea back in 2015, and soon it became a hit expanding from his home base in Barcelona to London, Paris and other parts of Europe. With 77% of consumers today regularly using AI-powered services and devices, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Forbes named Pierre one of its 30-under-30 leaders in Europe.

George Matus

George Matus, a 21-year-old entrepreneur launched Teal Drones while a sophomore in high school. Teal manufactures two high-end drones powered by  Nvidia-TX1 processors with advanced image recognition and top speeds of between 117 and 125 kilometers (70 and 80 miles) per hour. Matus won the Thiel Fellowship award in 2015, and since then his company has attracted more than $16 million in venture capital, and today employs 30. Mattus made the Forbes 30-under-30 list for consumer technology in 2018.