Turning 40 is an important landmark in everyone’s life. Until relatively recently, i.e., until the middle of last century, this age was the smallest value of the worldwide median life span. For an overwhelming majority of people today, this is a symbolic border separating the first half of their life, the period of accumulating experience along with intellectual and creative potential, from the second half, the period believed by many to be the time when the accumulated experience can be brought to fruition to maximize the benefit to society.
Of course, this supremacy of ‘maturity’ over ‘youth’ is, to some degree, a convention, and certainly not a dogma; there have been many young people whose names have gone down in history for brilliant actions, discoveries, and accomplishments that had a profound impact on society and the world, often changing them beyond recognition. We can find such people today, too: young scientists, politicians, musicians, human rights activists, doctors, et cetera whose influence can be felt even now and will probably increase in the future.
BRICS Business Magazine introduces its readers to 30 under-40 ‘influence leaders’ of the developing world – people who are young, influential, and promising, and whose names may well become globally famous.
Arjun Raj. India
Mankind has learned to live longer (over the last quarter of a century, the worldwide median life span has increased by more than 10 years), but they are forced to pay for it with a greater incidence of ‘old age’ diseases, such as cancer. Arjun Raj was born in Ithaca, New York, to a family of Indian scientists; his work gives us hope that effective methods will soon be discovered for treating cancer. The Raj Lab he set up in 2010 at Pennsylvania University specializes in quantitative analysis of cellular functions.
“Our work studies how the organization of genes affects their function. It’s like asking the effects of rearranging the recipes in a recipe book. We find that organization of genes matters, often in unexpected ways,” Raj explains.
Raj, 37, made the world’s top 10 most promising scientists list published annually by Popular Science; his research might develop new statistical methods for diagnosing cancer through DNA tests and for treating it.
Qing Cao. China
Moore’s law states that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years; that means that the computing power of today’s smartphone is greater than that of the supercomputer that defeated Garry Kasparov 20 years ago. The problem is that silicon, the principal material in microelectronics, is close to exhausting its physical capacities, and it is becoming harder and harder to increase the number of transistors without losing a device’s quality. Fortunately, 32-year-old Qing Cao, who works at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, knows just what to do.
“So we need to replace silicon with a new and better material. And, here, we are betting on carbon nanotubes,” Qing Cao says, describing the principal thrust of his research.
For a decade, Cao and his lab have worked on developing electronic-quality carbon nanotube transistors that do not have the fundamental drawbacks of silicon devices. Cao’s key invention is the technology for bonding nanotubes with metal contacts, an innovation that earned him the 2016 IBM Mater Inventor Award. Cao believes that within 10 to 15 years, it will be possible to create a processor with over 1 trillion transistors – which is more than the number of stars in the Milky Way – and it will pave the way for mankind toward a new cosmic information spurt.
He studied chemistry at Nanjing University in 2004 and obtained his Ph.D. in materials chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009.
Gisele Bündchen. Brazil
Even die-hard male chauvinists admit that female beauty rules the world – if this is the beauty of Gisele Bündchen, Brazil’s first supermodel, who has succeeded in breaking into the elite of the world’s fashion business.
Born in Horizontina in the south of Brazil, Bündchen started her modeling career at the age of 14, disregarding all skeptics. “I remember some people telling me my nose was too big or my eyes were too small, that I could never be on a magazine cover,” she shared in an interview for People magazine. “It wasn’t easy to be 14 and hear that kind of criticism. It made me feel insecure. I told my dad, and he said, ‘Next time, tell them, I have a big nose and that comes with a big personality.’”
Apparently, such sympathy and Bündchen’s steely personality brought results. In the 2000s, the star was the highest-paid supermodel in the world and her portfolio included collaboration with Ralph Lauren, D&G, Versace, Valentino, and other leading fashion houses. And the glossy covers she appeared on number in the hundreds. At 36, Bündchen has her own lingerie brand, Gisele Intimates. The mother of two is actively involved in charity and environmental protection.
Freeman Osonuga. Nigeria
Although piloted space flights have long since ceased to be a rarity (550 persons from nearly 40 countries have been into space since 1961), so far, none of them has represented the Dark Continent. Freeman Osonuga, a Nigerian surgeon with a diploma from Olabisi Onabanjo University, is the first black African with a real chance of going into near-earth orbit.
In August 2015, he made the short list of 30 candidates for a flight aboard the XCOR Lynx® Spacecraft under the Rising Star program, which had been launched a year before at the One Young World Summit in Dublin. The global forum’s goal is to look for, select and popularize future young leaders.
There is every reason to put Osonuga on such lists. He is one of Africa’s best-known activists working on the issues of poverty, helping the disabled, orphans, and socially vulnerable population groups. He personally took part in fighting the Ebola epidemic. Moreover, he is the founder and executive director of the Heal the World Foundation Nigeria and was named one of Nigeria’s top 10 young persons of 2013. Osonuga, 32, is certain that even small steps might lead to great results.
“Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world,” he said. “History is filled with stories of countless agents of change, men who in their bid to make changes to status quo made history.”
Jalil Allabidi. Jordan
To treat their patients well, doctors must speak their language. The Arabic language. This clear, yet non-trivial thought occurred to Jordanian surgeon Abdel Aziz Allabadi when, in the early 2000s, after having completed his studies and practiced medicine for a few years, he returned to his home city of Amman. Working in the refugee camps there, he realized the need to translate Western medical terminology into Arabic, the language of his patients. An English-Arabic dictionary of medical terms and concepts, published in 2004, formed the foundations of Altibbi.com, the Internet portal his son Jalil Allabadi set up to popularize his father’s work.
Allabadi Jr. holds a BA in industrial engineering from Bologna University and an MBA from the US Thunderbird School of Global Management; he had planned a career in pharmaceuticals. Yet, as he became involved in his father’s project, he saw that the Arabic population of Jordan and the region was in great need of accessible medical information, which was unavailable.
Today, the website Altibbi.com, which Allabadi founded in 2009, is the most visible and popular medical portal in Arabic. Its users can read and watch materials spanning a great range of medical subjects, and they can also actively communicate with doctors and receive consultations. Over 3,000 practicing doctors collaborate with the site; of these, about 70% are in Jordan and in Saudi Arabia. And that is only the beginning.
“We want to reach many more doctors and patients and get them engaged,” 38-year-old Allabadi said recently in an interview for Venture. The potential for expansion is tremendous, given that Arabic is today the native language of about 300 million people, the majority of whom have no access to Western standards of medical care.
Samira Makhmalbaf. Iran
While America and Hollywood top mainstream moviemaking, Iran may lay a justifiable claim to a special place in art house cinema. Over the last 10 years, Iranian filmmakers have garnered over 300 awards at international film festivals. Director and scriptwriter Samira Makhmalbaf is one of those riding the crest of the wave.
Born into the family of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the pioneer of Iranian art house moviemaking, Samira made her debut film, The Apple, at the age of 17. A year later, she became the youngest film director to be included in the official program of the Cannes Film Festival. Her second work, Blackboards, was awarded the Jury Special Award at Cannes in 2000.
Today, 37-year-old Makhmalbaf, who has made only five films, already lays claim to being the leader of her generation. The mission of her art is to improve the world around us. “Humans in the world are suffering from lots of pain and much of it is because of the way we think. Cinema has the power to change the way we think and that is one of the reasons I am in cinema,” Makhmalbaf said in a 2013 interview. “Also, I think cinema is like a mirror; you put it in front of society, and society and culture can see itself and if they find something wrong they can change it. So yes, I believe cinema can change the world for the better.”
Ana Júlia Ribeiro. Brazil
When, in October 2016, Michel Temer, Brazil’s new president, proposed a constitutional amendment freezing government spending, the passing of the amendment caused an explosion of discontent among Brazil’s youth, including mass takeovers of hundreds of schools and universities throughout the country.
Ana Júlia Ribeiro, a 16-year-old student, became the face and the voice of the protest, demanding that students themselves and independent experts be made part of educational reforms. A video of her speech at the hearing at the House of Representatives in Curitiba in the state of Paraná immediately went viral. “We know that we need a reform in high school education and the educational system as a whole, but we need a reform that has been debated and discussed and promoted by education professionals,” the activist said then.
Although it is too early to say that this episode will serve as a prologue for a long political career, it is hard to overestimate the future influence of people like Ribeiro in a country where more than half of the population of 210 million is under 20.
Chhavi Rajawat. India
If the gigantic pantheon of Indian gods were to be augmented with a deity responsible for the life of rural India, this deity would certainly have the looks and personality of 37-year-old Chhavi Rajawat, the sarpanch of the village of Soda in the Tonk region in Rajasthan state, the first woman in India with an MBA degree to hold such an office.
In 2010, Rajawat, a slim, European-looking brunette with a University of Pune diploma in management and a successful corporate career, accepted the suggestion that she run for office and then won the sarpanch elections in her native Soda.
Later, she said she wanted to repay her debt to society. The results of her work: running water, modern roads, solar power, banking services, and even hundreds of toilets in the houses of villagers who had never before known such modern amenities. And this is her contribution to the development of the entire country, which is in need of speedy modernization.
“If India continues to make progress at the same pace as it has for the past 65 years since independence, it just won’t be good enough. We’ll be failing people who dream about having water, electricity, toilets, schools and jobs. I am convinced we can do it differently and do it faster,” Rajawat said in an interview for NDTV.
Julius Malema. South Africa
A flamboyant appearance and outstanding public speeches are the calling cards of Julius Malema, the expressive leader and founder of the Economic Freedom Fighters party (EFF) of South Africa, a politician whom some call ‘the country’s future president’, while others label him ‘a mindless populist’, a ‘colonial lapdog’, and even ‘an agent of the West sent to undermine [African] revolutionary parties’.
A native of Seshego in the Limpopo Province, Malema grew up fatherless. He made a dizzying political career: At the age of 29, he was president of the Youth League of the African National Congress (ANC), the country’s ruling political party, which is headed by South African President Jacob Zuma. In 2013, after a conflict with Zuma, Malema set up the EFF, his own opposition party protecting the rights of the poorest black population; the EFF received nine percent of the votes and 25 seats in South Africa’s Parliament in the 2014 elections.
Today, despite his extremely contradictory image, accusations of racism, sexism, and corruption (which he denies), Malema is looking to his political future with confidence. “We said … that the EFF is a government in waiting. If anyone still doubts that today, that person needs … medical attention,” Malema said in Parliament in early February. The 36-year-old will be able to prove the validity of his claims in 2019, when parliamentary and presidential elections are held in South Africa.
Vitalik Buterin. Russia
He looks a bit child-like (a large head on a slim body, always wearing jeans and a T-shirt) but this should not mislead anyone: 23-year-old Vitalik Buterin is one of the world’s blockchain titans, and the professional community and largest global corporations closely follow his work and thoughts.
When he was six years old, his family emigrated to Canada; there, Buterin learned about bitcoins and he started working on blockchain technology, dropping out of the University of Waterloo.
The principal fruit of this effort is Ethereum, a distributing platform, and his own cryptocurrency, ‘ethers’, the world’s second most popular after bitcoins.
“Universality is our platform’s first advantage, making it possible to create a great number of apps. This is digital property, registering non-financial information, data storage, etc. The second important advantage is easy and fast development,” Buterin explains.
At its first development stage, the Ethereum project, conceived in 2012, received support from Peter Thiel, one of the most famous venture investors; now Ethereum is rapidly conquering the world. In particular, today, the platform is used by over 40 of the world’s leading banks, including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Barclays, and J.P. Morgan. Microsoft and IBM are also among its partners.
Mbali Matandela. South Africa
The historical 1976 student uprising in Soweto launched black youth’s fight for their rights, leading to the fall of apartheid. Even so, in today’s South Africa, at least one social group feels extremely vulnerable: young black women, since the level of discrimination, domestic, and sexual violence against them is still incredibly high.
Mbali Matandela coordinates the student movement in defense of the rights of this segment of the South African population. “As a member of this group of feminists, I have had the opportunity to voice the pain that black females experience based on how the ‘ideal’ personality of an elite white male has influenced how black men treat black women and LBTQIA [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual] people,” Matandela said in 2015. At that time, she was a senior at the University of Cape Town specializing in gender sociology and transformation issues.
It appears that Matandela’s voice has been heard. In January, the 25-year-old activist, who is also active in ‘decolonizing’ the education system at the University of Cape Town, received a Rhodes Trust grant to study at Oxford, which could increase the effectiveness of her activism in the future.
Jia Zhu. China
The dearth of clean drinking water is a problem that is reaching a dangerous level. Jia Zhu, a 35-year-old professor at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Nanjing University, thinks his research into nanomaterials with specified characteristics, photovoltaics, energy storage, and purification systems will find a solution to this problem, as well as many of humanity’s other pressing issues.
Zhu’s lab has developed a plasmic absorber, a device that allows cheap purification or desalination of water through a process imitating its natural circulation. Saline or impure water is placed inside a special ‘greenhouse’; the water is evaporated using solar energy, and it settles in a special container in a purified form. The efficiency of the device, which can also be used for other household needs (such as cooking food, since the process produces steam) exceeds 90%, while the cost is virtually zero.
“Clean water, the food, the power, and the clean environment are exactly what we need in many parts of the world. That is our mission.” Zhu said at the MIT EmTech conference.
Efficient, cheap, easy to mass-manufacture, environmentally safe – set against the background of the Earth’s growing population and decreasing availability of water resources, these features provide for humanity’s growing need for such technologies.
Patrick Ngowi. Tanzania
It may sound like a paradox, yet it is a fact: Africa, the region with the world’s richest energy resources, has an acute dearth of energy – and plugs. Patrick Ngowi took it on himself to improve the situation at least in one country, Tanzania. Ngowi is the founder of Helvetic Group, the biggest supplier of solar power solutions in the region.
Solar power is the logical extension of 31-year-old Ngowi’s first business. Back in the early 2000s, having taken out a small loan from his mother, he started a successful mobile phone sales business; but he soon faced a large number of complaints from his customers, who simply had nowhere to charge the devices they bought. At that point, Tanzania just did not have the infrastructure.
“Everyone wanted to get a phone and they could afford it. However, the challenge (was) …charging it. Thousands of my customers complained,” Ngowi said in an interview for the AFK Insider.
Returning to Tanzania after studying at Denzhou University in China, where he specialized in alternative energy sources, Hgowi opened a small store selling solar and thermal power equipment. Today, Helvetic Group remains the only Tanzanian company working with alternative power solutions and intending to provide clean, sustainable energy to West Africa and to the entire Dark Continent.
Yamandu Costa. Brazil
What is the sound made by the sensitive South Brazilian soul? If we ask this question on YouTube, chances are it will reply with a video of Yamandu Costa, a virtuoso seven-string guitar player and one of Brazil’s most talented musicians ever.
A native of the Passo Fundo region of Brazil’s southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, Costa started to play the guitar when he was seven years old, taught by his father, Algacir Costa, leader of the Os Fronteiriços group. Costa imbibed the traditions of the folk music of Brazil’s south, of Argentina and Uruguay. When he was 15, he began studying the works of Brazil’s best musicians and at 17 he played at the prestigious Circuito Cultural Banco do Brasil festival in São Paulo, which was when his name first became known to the public at large.
“I grew up playing choro, chamame, tango and milonga. For me the guitar is not a job, it is enjoying life. It is part of me,” the musician said in an interview. Today, 37-year-old Costa is a recognized master of the guitar and one of the principal cultural ambassadors of his country. He is also Brazil’s most active touring musician; he has performed in about 40 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and both Americas.
Olaoluwa Hallowed Oluwadara.
Central African Republic / Nigeria
“Never give up. Be focused, diligent, disciplined, and have God at the center of all your endeavors.” Such is the recipe for Olaoluwa Hallowed Oluwadara’s phenomenal success and his free advice to everyone who is interested. He is one of Africa’s most talented young scientists.
Oluwadara, the fourth son in a family of Christian missionaries from Nigeria, was born in the city of Bangui in the Central African Republic. He says he was brought up in the spirit of worshipping God, to Whom, he believes, his phenomenal success is due. He started school at the age of five and passed the standard programs with flying colors in all subjects (except physical education); at the age of 13, he enrolled in the French BA program in the Central African Republic and graduated a year later with the best grades in mathematics. Study at the School of Sciences at the University of Bangui followed. In his junior year, Oluwadara enrolled in programs in both physics and mathematics. At the age of 19, he received two Master’s degrees with distinction and enrolled in a Ph.D. program in mathematics at the University of Lagos, graduating in record time – two years and 10 months – with the all-time highest grade. As a result, in 2014, at the age of 24, Oluwadara became the youngest person to be awarded a Ph.D. in mathematics in Africa.
Continuing to work in the faculty of mathematics at the University of Lagos and specializing in functional analysis and fixed points theory, the 27-year-old scientist plans to obtain a professorship, another doctorate in mathematical physics and, as he said in an interview for Vanguard, to serve the Lord.
Ilya Sachkov. Russia
The greater the role computers and the digital world play in our lives, the higher the price humanity has to pay for them. Russia’s Federal Security Service estimates that the total losses from hacking over the last few years have been between $300 million and $1 billion, or 0.4–1.5% of global GDP. The ‘anti-hacker’ Ilya Sachkov is the person who raises the barrier between ‘bad guys’ and clients’ information systems.
Group-IB, the company he founded in 2003, specializes in preventing and investigating cybercrime (‘cyber forensics’), seeking and remedying vulnerabilities in clients’ information networks. It searches for digital malfeasants and even fights cyber terrorism.
“First of all, cyber terrorists’ goal is not to steal money or information. Their goal is to disrupt an infrastructure’s functioning and to publicize it,” Sachkov explained in an interview for Lenta.ru. “The principal goal of Islamic terrorists is to disrupt the functioning of a system.”
Gartner consultants put Group-IB on the list of the world’s seven most influential cyber security companies. Group-IB collaborates actively with Russia’s leading corporations, including Sberbank and Rostekh, as well as with companies abroad, including in the UK and the US. In 2016, Forbes named 30-year-old Sachkov among the world’s most promising young businesspersons.
Agatha Sangma. India
A lawyer, environmental activist, amateur photographer, admirer of Orwell and Hemingway. In addition to being all of those, Agatha Sangma is one of India’s elite youth and its youngest and most promising politicians.
Sangma was born in New Delhi into the family of Purno Agitok Sangma, a former speaker of the Lok Sabha, the House of the People, the lower house of India’s parliament. Her childhood was spent in east India’s Meghalaya state. In 2008, after her father’s resignation, she was elected to the 14th and then the 15th Lok Sabha. Later, at the age of 29, she became the Minister for Rural Development in Manmohan Singh’s government, the youngest cabinet member in India’s history.
“I never thought I’d join politics so early. I did see it as a future plan but so much has happened in the past two years and this came up,” she was quoted as saying by Outlook. “The pressures of this job are huge. You cannot survive here on a name.”
Although Sangma’s stellar civil service career went into a hiatus in 2012, when she resigned after a government reshuffle, her prospects in Indian politics are still excellent. In particular, in the spring of last year, 36-year-old Sangma was considered for parliamentary elections as the National People’s Party’s candidate from the state of Meghalaya.
Mohlopheni Jackson Marakalala. South Africa
Is Africa ready to fight seriously against malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, Ebola haemorrhagic fever, and many other dangerous infections that imperil the social prosperity and economic prospects of the Dark Continent? In 2015, the audience of the Next Einstein Forum, an African scientific conference, could not give an unequivocally positive response to this question, limiting themselves to the consensus that the conditio sine qua non is consistent governmental policy in scientific development. With commitments to science, countries would become more “capable of solving their own problems”, said Mohlopheni Jackson Marakalala at the forum.
Marakalala is a senior lecturer at the Division of Immunology, University of Cape Town, and one of the most brilliant young scientists in South Africa, specializing in research into tuberculosis and other HIV-concomitant infectious diseases. A native of Mokopane, he graduated from the University of Limpopo and the University of Cape Town with degrees in chemical pathology. After, he conducted research into immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard for four years before returning to his homeland in 2015.
The topicality of 37-year-old Marakalala’s work is evident; at year-end 2016, the number of HIV-infected people in South Africa, with its population of 56 million, exceeded 7 million, and tuberculosis is still the leading cause of death in the country.
Diego Matheuz. Venezuela
Talent, perseverance, and a systemic approach are the qualities required for mastering the heights of performing arts. Diego Matheuz, one of the most gifted and recognized conductors in both Americas, knows this firsthand. He trained under the famous El Sistema, Venezuela’s state system of musical education, which provides a professional education and paves the way to the future for hundreds of thousands of gifted children from poor Venezuelan families.
Starting with violin classes in his native Barquisimeto, Matheuz moved to Caracas, where he started conducting. He debuted internationally in March 2008 as a conductor of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra at the prestigious Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. Since then, Matheuz’s international fame has been on the rise. His multiple engagements include working with the leading philharmonic orchestras of the US, Canada, and Japan, and four years as the principal conductor of Teatro la Fenice in Venice and the principal guest conductor of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
“I live between a few places. I have one house in Venice and one house in Venezuela, but my real home is Caracas,” the musician said in an interview for Dumbo Feather in 2014.
Despite his intense work with foreign orchestras, 32-year-old Matheuz retains strong ties with his homeland. In 2013, he accepted the position of associated conductor with the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar de Venezuela and he regularly performs with Venezuelan orchestras throughout the world.
Yiqing Yin. China/France
The stereotype of the world of haute couture is that of a tight corporation of Western and Japanese designers. This is no longer true since Yiqing Yin burst on the scene, becoming the first haute couture designer with Chinese roots.
Yin is a native of Beijing and she was four when her family moved to Paris. She graduated from the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs, then interned at the French Cacharel. There, she created her first collection in 2010, when she participated in the prestigious Hyères International Festival and won the Grand Prize of Creation from the City of Paris.
Thus started Yin’s triumphant progress around the most prestigious catwalks of the Old and New Worlds. “My clothes are for someone who wants to affirm her identity, who is not afraid of being individual and who likes to play with her appearances. She wants to communicate something special. She is feminine but also very strong,” she says, explaining her professional philosophy.
Although the 31-year-old designer says she feels herself to be French, Asia and China greatly interest her. At the same time, she has already had a few major shows in her first homeland and China is beginning to perceive her as its embodiment in the West.
Ashley Uys. South Africa
It is hard to imagine an effective fight against such grave infectious diseases as malaria, tuberculosis, syphilis, and HIV without reliable and accessible methods of diagnostics, especially if we are talking about the poorest strata of the South African population. Thirty-four-year-old Ashley Uys intends to solve this problem. Uys is the founder and head of Medical Diagnostech, a company specializing in the manufacture of inexpensive high-precision systems for diagnosing certain dangerous and widespread infections in the region. The malaria test developed by the company tests for all known malaria strains and within half an hour, assesses the effectiveness of the treatment a patient is undergoing.
“Our products benefit communities in terms of accessibility, availability, and cost. They are there for everybody,” said Uys, who holds a degree in biotechnology from the University of Cape Town and a degree from the University of the Witwatersrand’s business school. Diagnostech’s diagnostics systems have received the SAB Foundation social innovation award; they are used in South Africa and are now widely known throughout the world.
Nick Kaoma. South Africa
A whimsical intertwining of South African cultures, architectural flair, smells, and cuisine of his native Cape Town are the main sources of inspiration and the essence of the professional philosophy of Nick Kaoma, one of South Africa’s most successful youth clothes designers. Head Honcho, the company he created in 2008, does not merely design and manufacture clothing for urban youth, including T-shirts, caps, hoodies, vests, and dresses. His company actively shapes the worldview, lifestyle, and culture of South African teens.
The Head Honcho brand communicates values that resonate with its army of fans. This is the brand for those who ‘live a progressive life’, work a lot (or ‘hustle’ in hip-hop slang), and take their life and career into their own hands.
Kaoma himself gladly shares his advice with ‘Head Honcho people’ who would like to repeat his success. “Read as much about the industry as possible. If you don’t like reading, then watch YouTube videos of successful people. You need to be a sponge … suck as much stuff about this game as possible. Never stop learning!” These principles brought 32-year-old Kaoma both success and media recognition – two years ago, Forbes named him among the most promising African businesspersons.
Eduardo Saverin. Brazil
Clicking on the painfully familiar icon with the blue letter F on a notebook or a mobile device and joining a chat or browsing a news feed is the typical ritual that starts every day for over 1.5 billion people throughout the world. A native of São Paulo, the American entrepreneur Eduardo Saverin is one of those to whom a third of today’s humanity owes the joy (or the horror) of communication via the most popular social network in the world. Of course, this is Facebook, which he invented and created together with Mark Zuckerberg in the early 2000s, when they were both at Harvard.
Although Saverin’s ‘honeymoon’ with Facebook was not long, he still owns about five percent of the network’s shares and Facebook’s 2012 IPO made the venture entrepreneur one of the world’s youngest billionaires. Today, 35-year-old Saverin, who permanently resides in Singapore but retains his Brazilian citizenship, is preoccupied with ‘business angel’ investments into venture projects in Asia for resolving humanity’s pressing problems.
“Every step of my life is not about creating a new Facebook or something new necessarily that goes and gets distributed to a billion-plus people,” he said during one of his rare public appearances at the Tech in Asia Conference last year. “It’s about making sure that what I do is fulfilling both to myself and others in the world.”
Anoushka Shankar. India
If the sitar embodies India’s poetical soul, then Anoushka Shankar embodies the sitar itself.
Daughter of Ravi Shankar, the world-famous classic of sitar music who introduced Western audiences to it, Anoushka is a worthy successor to her father. Born in the US and permanently residing in London, Shankar is probably the best-known of today’s sitar players and composers of sitar music. She has succeeded in combining the authentic tradition of her historical homeland with today’s Western musical trends. “Music is for me at least a way of responding to the world and processing my feelings, not always consciously,” she said.
The intermediary tangible results of her work are five Grammy nominations and a dozen albums. The latest work by 35-year-old Shankar is the Land of Gold album she recorded soon after the birth of her second daughter and released in the spring of 2016; it is dedicated to the plight of European refugees.
Sergey Karyakin. Russia
Gone are the times when the Soviet chess school was famous throughout the world and decent chess skills were a natural attribute of any member of the Soviet intelligentsia. Sergey Karyakin has succeeded in bringing the thrill of chess back to the public and also in reminding the world of Russia as the heir to great chess traditions.
He is the youngest chess grandmaster in history and the first Russian master in the last 10 years to become the challenger for the World Chess Championship. Although his dramatic 20-day-long game against Magnus Carlsen in November of last year ended in Carlsen’s victory, it is hard to overestimate the public interest and the surge of interest in chess spurred by the match, which was watched online by more than 7 million people.
Despite his defeat, Karyakin, who has won a number of chess titles and awards, does not intend to give up on his principal goal. “Yes, I won a World Rapid Chess Championship and a World Blitz Chess Championship, now there is only one pinnacle I have yet to achieve. I won a Chess World Cup, a Candidates Tournament, but I still haven’t won the main trophy. I will strive toward it,” the chess player said in an interview for Russia Today. The 27-year-old Russian chess grand master has enough time to fulfil his dream: Karyakin says that his active chess career will last for at least another 10 to 15 years.
Samat Abish. Kazakhstan
No matter how great the love of Kazakhstan’s people for their yelbasy, ‘the Leader of the Nation’ (this is the title officially given to Kazakhstan’s permanent president, 76-year-old Nursultan Nazarbayev), the formal change of the Republic’s leader is a long-expected event. Major Gen. Samat Abish, the senior vice-chairman of the National Security Committee (NSC) appointed to the office in January 2015, who also happens to be the yelbasy’s youngest nephew, is the person most frequently referred to as Nazarbayev’s likely successor.
The 38-year-old Abish, a graduate of the NSC Kazakh Academy and of the Russian Academy of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), has built a career in the NSC and in Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Justice. According to the constitution, he still has a year before he can officially run for president. Yet, experts believe that should the need arise, he will assume the office at any moment and without any delay. For instance, as an interim acting president prior to holding formal elections, which he will win.
“The plan for doing it has been tested several times. Everything has been discussed by everybody, the script has been written, the dramatis personae have been determined according to the script,” Victor Khrapunov, Almaty’s former mayor, said in an interview for the online news source Cacompro.
Be that as it may, the appearance of Samat Abish in the presidential office will most likely mean continuity of Kazakhstan’s policies and politics toward Russia and China, its key partners in the region. A turnabout toward the US is less likely.
Nieng Yan. China
Although China still lags behind leading academic countries in the overall level of development of fundamental science, it already has world-class researchers. Nieng
Yan, a biochemist, professor at the School of Medicine, and lab director at Tsinghua University in Beijing, is one of them.
Yan graduated from the Department of Biological Sciences & Biotechnology at Tsinghua University and worked at the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University in the US for seven years. Then she accepted an invitation to go back to her alma mater, where she engaged in lecturing and was appointed laboratory director. Yan’s principal research subject, for many years, has been the structures and mechanisms of membrane proteins that play the crucial role in basic physiological processes. Her successes have brought her international recognition and multiple awards, including the International Young Scientist Award in 2012 (the award was established by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute), and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Biophysics in 2015.
The work carried out by 39-year-old Yan and her students will be another brick in the foundation of China’s rapidly developing science. “China attaches more and more importance to the research of fundamental science, in which its investment has risen sharply for many consecutive years,” she stated in an interview for the Women of China online magazine. “I think the most fundamental responsibility and mission of Chinese scientists is to make the country’s scientific strength match its economy and its research fruits exert an influence on the world.”
Chaoyang Lu. China
In August 2017, a rocket carrying a 600-kilogram satellite, developed jointly by the Chinese and Austrian academies of science, is scheduled to be launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre. If everything goes to plan, China will become the first country to start practical experiments with quantum effects that could serve as foundations for developing a new, super-secure global communications system. This would put China ahead of Canada, Japan, Italy, and Singapore, which have similar programs. “Definitely, I think there will be a race,” says Lu, a physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei. The 33-year-old is a rising star and one of the principal figures behind the program. Thus far, scientists have only succeeded in demonstrating quantum communication on optical fiber at a range of up to 300 kilometers; maintaining a photon’s stable quantum state at a longer range is still extremely difficult owing to the dispersion and attenuation problem. Chinese scientists led by Lu hope that space will prove a better environment for transmitting such signals, which promises a cosmic-scale revolution in communications on Earth in the foreseeable future.
Victor Shaburov. Russia
The team from St Petersburg State University achieved a signal victory at the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest in May 2016 in Thailand, and this honor should be ascribed not only to the team itself, but to its sponsor and mentor, the Russian programmer and venture entrepreneur Victor Shaburov.
A native of Ekaterinburg and a graduate in mathematics and physics from St. Petersburg State University, plus the winner of several mathematics Olympiads, Shaburov is the founder of several successful software startups, including SPB Software, Handster, and Looksery, which was acquired by Snapchat in 2015 for $150 million, with Shaburov as its CEO and president.
Given all their differences, Shaburov’s startups have one thing in common. “All three companies were created by Olympiad winners, all three became world leaders, and all were acquired. As you can see, it has been a great success,” the investor said in an interview for Republic. “In essence, this is what a business model is.”
This model continues to be successful: 40-year-old Shaburov sponsors several teams of young Russian and Ukrainian programmers; 10 of them became finalists of international Olympiads, and they number in dozens in the entrepreneur’s entire ‘portfolio’.
Maryam Mirzakhani. Iran
You will have to agree that, nowadays, you have to be very lucky to find a person fluent in the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces, not to mention their moduli spaces. Maryam Mirzakhani, a mathematics professor at Stanford University, is the leading specialist in the area; in 2014, she became the first woman in the world to be awarded the prestigious Fields Medal for an outstanding contribution in the field.
The 39-year-old Mirzakhani says that, as a child with a fondness for books, she dreamed of becoming a writer, but life had other plans for her. After enrolling in Farzanegan, a prestigious girls’ school that is part of Iran’s National Organisation for Development of Exceptional Talents, she became interested in mathematics and, two years running, in 1994 and 1995, she won gold medals at international Olympiads. In 1999, after graduating from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, she moved to the US, where she obtained a doctorate from Harvard; then she became a professor at Stanford, where she now teaches and conducts research.
“Most problems I work on are related to geometric structures on surfaces and their deformations. In particular, I am interested in understanding hyperbolic surfaces,” she said in an interview for the Clay Mathematics Institute. Yet, the area of her academic interests is far broader and includes Lobachevskian geometry, Teichmüller’s theory, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry.
