PopTech Videos: PopCasts

Ryan Smith is co-founder and chief technical officer of Micromidas, Inc., a biotech company that uses an innovative microbial process to convert raw sewage into high-quality plastics. A non-petroleum plastic made from organic waste that completely degrades in six months to a year? What’s not to love?

To combat the spread of AIDS, Kel Sheppey founded Wild4Life, an AIDS awareness and testing organization that collaborates with wildlife conservation groups, reaching remote communities and educating them about the importance of AIDS testing and education. The goal: to completely stop the spread of AIDS by leveraging influence within communities.

Injectable drugs are a huge part of modern life, and with 16 billion injections a year, delivery system innovation is a field ripe for breakthroughs. 2010 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow Rush Bartlett’s company LyoGo has developed a completely self-contained system with the potential to revolutionize the way people are immunized.

After surviving Liberia’s civil conflict, Raj Panjabi co-founded Last Mile Health (known in Liberia as Tiyatien Health) to tackle the triple threat facing health care in post-war countries: a battered public sector, workforce shortages and rampant poverty. Pioneering a community-based health system, Last Mile Health serves as a scalable, public sector model for achieving equity in health.

2010 Social Innovation Fellow Nina Dudnik’s organization, Seeding Labs, takes discarded lab equipment from the United States to needy labs in other countries. As part of its commitment, Seeding Labs also connects scientists from the U.S. with their counterparts in Africa and South America.

Matt Berg helped create and pilot ChildCount+, a mobile-phone-based health platform that empowers communities in Africa to improve child and maternal health. Matt also trains local programmers at the Rural Technology Lab, with a goal to advance the health of millions while decentralizing the software development process.

2010 Social Innovation Fellow Leila Janah founded Samasource to bring digitally connected jobs to people living in poverty, providing computer-based microwork via the Internet. Her philosophy: “Handouts are not going to end global poverty, but work — real work — just might.”

As the founder of the Community Conferencing Center, Social Innovation Fellow Lauren Abramson works to alter how society typically responds to crime and conflict — changing the focus from punishment to accountability, healing, and learning.

Laura Stachel and Hal Aronson founded WE CARE Solar, which designs solar-powered systems to meet essential maternity care needs. These portable, suitcase-sized systems are immediately operational and expandable. Powering lighting and communication equipment, they enable timely and appropriate emergency care for mothers and infants.

Kim Cobb studies the climate variability of the past in order to construct a sense of what we can expect in the future. Having a clearer sense of rainfall, for example, over the next 100 years will be incredibly valuable in informing public policy.

2010 Science and Public Leadership Fellow Justin Gallivan is amazed by bacteria. You can get them to do almost anything. For instance, e. coli bacteria can be programmed to eat atrazine, a widely used herbicide that contaminates ground water. The key? Being able to program them to solve pressing eco-challenges.

Gidon Eshel is a statistician who grew up working on a dairy farm on an Israeli Kibbutz, a combination that’s led to a deep knowledge of how what we eat affects our planet. His finding: a meat-based diet far exceeds the carbon emissions of a plant-based diet – meaning that most people’s usual way of eating – the Mean American Diet – is truly “MAD.”

Casey Dunn"Casey Dunn is rethinking where individuality begins. He is fascinated by siphonophores, deep sea superorganinisms comprised of thousands of organisms that are genetically identical but function in different ways. How have evolutionary pressures acted on the siphonophore and the individual organisms within it?

Brooke Betts Farrell’s idea is simple – she wants her company, RecycleMatch, to be the eBay of trash. Matching those who have waste with those who need it, RecycleMatch lowers costs, reduces waste and accelerates green innovation.

Brian Elliot founded Friendfactor to unlock the power of friendship to accelerate legal freedoms for LGBT people. Friendfactor’s innovative social networking platform shifts the focus of gay rights from ideology towards a far more personal concept: friends making a difference in their gay friends’ lives.