The Inventors

When Technology Review announced its annual list of 100 innovators under the age of 35 this fall, Ainissa Ramirez ’90 and Mijail Serruya ’96 Ph.D. were among the choices. Ramirez, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Yale, has discovered a universal solder than can bond together materials of wildly different types, and Serruya, a Brown medical student, was honored for his work on a brain-machine interface that might eventually allow severely paralyzed people to move robotic aids through mere thoughts (see “Mind Control” in the November/December 2001 BAM). Not to be outdone, Popular Science this fall revealed its annual PopSci Brilliant 10, which included Tejal Desai ’94, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, whose current project is to develop artificial blood vessels that trigger the growth of natural ones and then biodegrade.

Wild in the Stacks

Just when U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft inadvertently began giving librarians publicity as protectors of free speech, along comes Ayanna Gaines ’94 to say that they’re a pretty fun crowd, too. “I’m an extroverted bibliophile, a bookworm who really enjoys to party,” Gaines, a reference librarian and assistant professor at Elmhurst College, told the Illinois Library Association’s Reporter in August.

Iron Woman Former

World champion triathlete Siri Lindley ’91 might have retired from competition, but not from the sport. Lindley now coaches elite athletes with Olympic ambitions, drawing triathletes from around the world to train with her in Colorado. “I’m definitely not in this for the money or anything like that,” Lindley told the Denver Post in August.