Popular Science Announces the “Brilliant 10” of 2022

Popular Science Announces the “Brilliant 10” of 2022

The 10 early-career scientists and engineers whose work can change the world

NEW YORK — OCTOBER 19, 2022—​Today, Popular Science announced its Brilliant 10 class of 2022. The annual list recognizes early-career, U.S.-based scientists and engineers whose work tackles problems across a variety of disciplines in new and novel ways. One of Popular Science’s longest-running franchises, the Brilliant 10 made its return in 2021 following a five-year hiatus. 

This year’s honorees and their work represent one of the most diverse classes in the program’s history. The 2022 class includes an evolutionary biologist predicting how climate change will impact individual species, an engineer designing algorithms to improve urban mass transit, a chemical engineer turning food waste into chemical-trapping filters, a biotechnologist developing a “synthetic immune system” out of microbes, and many more. All Brilliant 10 candidates work as Associate or Assistant Professors at academic institutions around the country. 

“Since its inception, the Brilliant 10 has celebrated the country’s brightest up-and-coming innovators, and this year’s class has us more excited than ever about the future,” says Editor-in-Chief, Corinne Iozzio. “What’s perhaps most remarkable about this group is that they’re just getting started. We’re excited to celebrate the work they’re doing now—but even more eager to see what they can accomplish next.”

MEET THE BRILLIANT 10 OF 2022 

Kandis Leslie Abdul-Aziz, University of California, Riverside

Rachael Bay, University of California, Davis 

John Blazeck, Georgia Institute of Technology

Chantell Evans, Duke University

Mohammad Hajiesmaili, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Daniel Larremore, University of Colorado Boulder

Daniella Mendoza DellaGiustina, University of Arizona

Sangeetha Reddy, University of Texas Southwestern 

Samitha Samaranayake, Cornell University

Aaron Streets, University of California, Berkeley

The editorial team assesses hundreds of candidates from a multitude of U.S.-based institutions, across different disciplines, before settling on the finalists. You can read more about the Brilliant 10 on popsci.com. 

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