20 Under 40: Young Shapers of the Future (Academia and Ideas)
The future is unwritten. It is also right around the corner, and, if, as science fiction author William Gibson noted, it is not evenly distributed, more and more young people around the world are reaching toward it to shape it, improve it, and make it more equitable. These “shapers of the future” work in many fields and endeavors, embracing every corner and intersection of health and medicine, science and technology, and business and entrepreneurship. They are people of ideas, framing the intellectual questions and concerns that will guide future thought. They are scholars, builders, designers, architects, artists, teachers, writers, musicians, and social and political leaders. While under the age of 40 (as of January 2022), the 200 shapers of the future that we will highlight in this series have already left their mark on the present, and we expect to see much more invention, innovation, creation, and interpretation from them in times to come.
Ghena Alhanaee (31)
Born in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Ghena Alhanaee took an early interest in how things work, receiving a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Petroleum Institute of Abu Dhabi. She went on to earn a master’s degree in energy resources engineering from Stanford University and pursued a doctorate in civil engineering at the University of Southern California. Remembering the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, she is deeply involved in engineering solutions to risk management and emergency-disaster preparedness, knowing that her homeland is a web of interconnected energy sources and is largely dependent on desalinated water that would be put in danger if power sources were to be compromised. She was named one of the top 20 innovators from the Middle East and North Africa under age 35 by MIT’s Technology Review for her proposal for a coordinated regional approach to emergency-disaster preparedness, incorporating protections for food supplies, water desalination, oil production, and other economic sectors.
Jan David Bakker (32)
Born in Bielefeld, Germany, Jan Bakker received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tübingen; he studied abroad at the University of Michigan in his senior year. He then took a master’s of philosophy and a doctoral degree in economics at the University of Oxford. Now a postdoctoral fellow at University College London and a former intern at the European Central Bank, he is developing a body of scholarly work that explains the wealth of cities through export participation, which concentrates in populous areas with relatively greater market access. This has implications for income inequality, a topic of central concern to economists today. One of his research papers centers on that topic as it relates to migrant workers in postapartheid South Africa, while another extends far into the past to study trade networks and work organization in the Mediterranean region during the Iron Age. He also studied the effects on supply chains of Britain’s exit from the European Union. His work won him one of two 2019 World Trade Organization Essay Awards for Young Economists.
Rutger Bregman (33)
Born in a Dutch coastal village, Rutger Bregman attended high school in a suburb of The Hague, then studied history at Utrecht University and the University of California at Los Angeles. Based in the Netherlands but traveling all over the world, he has emerged as a leading historian and commentator whose work often appeared in De Correspondent, an online journalistic cooperative. His interests, expressed in books such as Utopia for Realists (2017) and Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020), include education reform and a “return to utopian thinking,” the latter of which includes the 15-hour workweek and eliminating international borders. He operates from the central observation that “in the past, everything was worse” and that, despite the hiccups of history, the human story is one of progress. Similarly, Humankind assumes of human nature that it tends toward the good rather than the bad. Much in demand as a speaker and a prolific writer, Bregman has yet to scale his workweek back to that 15 hours.
Wesley Buckwalter (~36)
After receiving a doctorate in philosophy from the City University of New York and teaching at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Wesley Buckwalter took a post as professor of philosophy and cognitive science at the University of Manchester in England. Now at George Mason University in Virginia, he is at the forefront of work in experimental philosophy, with a particular interest in how knowledge—whether the true knowledge of fact or the false knowledge of delusion and deception—behaves with respect to the practical business of thinking, reasoning, and decision-making. This work has implications for a number of areas of philosophical concerns, such as metaethics. Experimental philosophy, Buckwalter explains, is a newly emerging interdisciplinary field that uses the methods of psychology to investigate philosophical questions: Is morality relative or absolute, and how do people think about that question? Is there such a thing as free will? How do we know that we think and therefore exist? A Companion to Experimental Philosophy, which Buckwalter coedited, and much of his published work address these and many other matters.
Molly Burhans (32)
Born in New York City, Molly Burhans was raised in an academic household, her mother a professor of computer science and her father an oncological researcher. With childhood interests ranging from ballet to computer graphics, she enrolled in university as a dance major, then switched to philosophy at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, where she also studied mathematics and art. While at Canisius, a Jesuit school, Burhans took a renewed interest in Roman Catholicism, the faith in which she grew up, while at the same time taking a scholarly interest in environmental matters. She applied her graduate training in geographic information systems (GIS) to questions of land use and conservation. She broadened her expertise to bring GIS to bear on an array of social and environmental concerns, such as locating schools in such a way that they would bring the most benefit to poor neighborhoods without adequate transportation. Founding an organization called GoodLands, she has been working with the Roman Catholic Church to inventory land and other property holdings with an eye to better managing them and making them environmentally sustainable, thereby helping combat climate change. The project neatly dovetails with Pope Francis’s environmental concerns as voiced in the encyclical Laudato Si’, and Burhans’s work has received support from the Vatican.
Tamma Carleton (33)
Tamma Carleton grew up among the redwoods of California, the daughter of artists who raised her in a rural intentional community. After earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics from Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, she moved to Washington, D.C., to work in policy analysis. She founded a farmer’s market in her neighborhood, astonished that many of her acquaintances weren’t quite sure how the nexus of food and the environment worked. As a Rhodes scholar, she earned a master’s degree in environmental change and management from the University of Oxford, then took a second master’s degree there in economics for development. She returned to California to earn a doctorate in agricultural and resource economics from Berkeley. Now an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, she conducts research that combines statistical models with data to predict such things as the effects of climate change and water availability on minority communities.
[Meet the people under 40 who are transforming the future of social activism and politics.]
Claire Catenaccio (~36)
Interested in theater and acting, Claire Catenaccio looked to the classical tragedians as a basis for her craft. She received an undergraduate degree in classics at Harvard, followed by a master’s from Oxford and a doctorate from Columbia University. Catenaccio looked deeply into ancient Greek drama, including the Oresteia of Aeschylus, and argued that much of it is so well known that some of its critical dramatic elements—its stagecraft—are taken for granted and deserve a fresh look. Catenaccio, now an assistant professor of classics at Georgetown University, introduces her students to the behind-the-curtains work of theatrical productions, and, as a dramaturge and actor, she has staged numerous classical texts in a modern context. Along with her other work, Catenaccio publishes reviews and essays in journals such as The New Criterion, and she interviews women in the classics for a Society of Classical Studies blog. She is now studying the use of monody—a solo song performed by a key actor—in the dramas of Euripides. Her work brings new life to ancient texts.
Robin Dembroff (31)
Born female in a conservative religious household, Robin Dembroff identifies as genderqueer and uses the pronoun they, “though I make a conscious effort to be patient about this.” Dembroff earned a master’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and a doctorate from Princeton University, both in philosophy, and joined the faculty of Yale University in 2017. Dembroff specializes in the ontology and metaphysics of gender, with a particular interest in what and how terms such as gay, female, Black, and other categorical markers signify. This research has resulted in a book forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Dembroff writes commentaries on philosophical matters for general readers for The Guardian as well as for the New York Review of Books, Scientific American, and other publications. Dembroff has filed an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case concerning gender discrimination, bringing philosophical interests to bear in a most practical way.
Qiaomei Fu (37)
A native of Jiangxi province in China, Qiaomei Fu enjoyed science from an early age. In college she studied sciences, math, computer programming, and archaeology, then went on to earn a master’s degree in archaeometry from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. She was awarded a doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, completing a degree in 2013, and she conducted postdoctoral research in population genetics at Harvard Medical School. She is now head of the ancient DNA lab in the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, working in evolutionary genetics and population genetics. Her groundbreaking work in human paleontology has led to a reevaluation of the relationships between early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals in Ice Age Europe, as well as the peopling of Asia. Among her other accomplishments, she was the first scientist in the world to sequence nuclear DNA from an early human, using a 45,000-year-old thighbone from Siberia and a 40,000-year-old jawbone from a man who lived in what is now eastern Europe and who, Fu’s analysis revealed, had a Neanderthal ancestor among his Homo sapiens forebears.
Kathryn Paige Harden (39)
Raised in a conservative Christian household outside Memphis, Tennessee, Kathryn Paige Harden excelled at every subject she turned to, earning a scholarship at Furman University in South Carolina. She was drawn into a program meant to introduce underrepresented populations, including women, into the sciences, through which she did laboratory work in rodent genetics, and she applied to graduate school in clinical psychology, earning a master’s and doctorate from the University of Virginia. Soon after, she joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, where she embarked on genetic studies that entered into the controversial nature-versus-nurture debate. Which is more important, one’s genetic makeup or one’s environment? The answer, she proposes in her 2021 book The Genetic Lottery, is both. As she writes, “You didn’t get to pick your parents, and that applies just as much to what they bequeathed to you genetically as what they bequeathed to you environmentally.” Understanding those who “won the lottery” in both areas, she suggests, can help mitigate some of the inequalities that follow when some people are born into poverty and others into wealth—a matter that intersects with politics, sociology, and science, which Harden, now a full professor, confronts vigorously in her book.
Christopher Hirata (39)
Born in Michigan and raised in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, Christopher Hirata was barely a teenager in 1996 when he won a gold medal at the International Physics Olympiad. By that time he was taking university-level courses in mathematics and physics, and the following year he enrolled at the California Institute of Technology, and he graduated at the age of 18. While at Caltech, he also participated in research for NASA on ways in which Mars might be colonized. At 22 years of age he had received a doctorate in physics at Princeton University, writing on gravitational lensing. He became a full professor at Caltech at the age of 29, but he moved the following year to the Ohio State University. A pioneer of “precision cosmology,” a blend of computer science and observational astronomy, he earned the Helen B. Warner Prize, which recognizes leading young astronomers, in 2014, two years after winning the Presidential Early Career Award for his contributions to science.
Haunani Kane (33)
Haunani Kane, a native Hawaiian, grew up on the island of Oahu, where she became a competitive surfer as a teenager. She attended Kamehameha Schools, an institution combining academic study with Hawaiian traditions. Her fascination with the ocean led her to study the navigational methods of her Polynesian ancestors. Using these skills, she has sailed thousands of miles across the Pacific, using the setting as an outdoor classroom while documenting the effects of climate change on coral reefs and other oceanic ecosystems. She studied environmental sciences at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, earning a doctorate in geosciences. She is now a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow, studying through the analysis of coral reefs and sediments how Pacific islands respond to environmental stressors. This research in turn sheds light on how the animals and people who live on those islands are affected by changes in sea level and storms.
Ibram X. Kendi (39)
Born in New York City, Ibram X. Kendi grew up there and in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. He attended Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, a historically Black institution of higher learning, studying journalism and African American studies. He worked in journalism in Virginia before leaving to study for a doctorate in African American studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. A leading scholar and historian of race and discriminatory policy in America, he has since taught at numerous universities, including American University and the University of Florida. In 2020 he became the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and founding director of the Center for Antiracist Research there. His best-selling book How to Be an Antiracist was published in 2019, the same year that he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. Another book of his, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, won the National Book Award in 2016. He is active as a journalist as well, writing features and commentaries for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He lives in Boston with his wife, a pediatric emergency physician.
Marie Kondo (37)
Born in Tokyo, Marie Kondo grew up with a passion for cleanliness and organization. When she was a student at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University, she founded a consulting business that emphasized personal organization, decluttering, and ridding oneself of things that no longer serve or, as she has made into a slogan, “spark joy.” Rather than clean by room, as many organizational guides have it, Kondo’s method involves taking categories, such as clothing or sentimental keepsakes, and weeding through them relentlessly: “Thank them for their service—then let them go,” she writes. Her Kondo Method has given rise to four best-selling books and numerous online courses, and she is widely recognized for her expertise in what she simply calls “tidying.” Her KonMari brand offers a suite of services, from personal consulting to online courses. Adepts marvel at the changes that her call for a decluttered lifestyle bring. Kondo and her family now live in Los Angeles, from which she travels worldwide to give presentations.
Simon Kuestenmacher (34)
Born in Germany, Simon Kuestenmacher won an all-city award for the best thesis written from Munich’s high schools, examining the economics of photovoltaic energy on city buildings. He studied human geography at the Humboldt University of Berlin, earning a bachelor’s degree in 2009, then moved to Australia and received a master’s degree in urban geography from the University of Melbourne in 2014. In 2017 he founded a demographics consulting group, advising industry and government on population and social trends in the region. A columnist for The Australian newspaper since 2018, he works on demographic trends, patterns of consumption, and cultural change in Australia and Asia. His imaginative curation of maps, infographics, and other content that, as he says on Twitter, “explain how the world works” has earned him a large following. He is now studying the likely shape of Australian society in the wake of COVID-19.
Sara Minkara (32)
A native of Massachusetts, Sara Minkara spent her summers in her parents’ native country of Lebanon. She lost her sight at the age of seven and was introduced to a host of programs, medical and social, to help her continue her education and development. She noticed, however, that the same opportunities were not available in Lebanon. While an undergraduate at Wellesley College, she founded a nonprofit firm called Empowerment Through Integration, which offers educational opportunities to blind and impaired children in the developing world. She went on to receive a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley and a master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is a popular speaker, addressing topics such as disability inclusion, international development, and the empowerment of marginalized people. “I’m Muslim, blind, American and woman,” she told Inkline. “I have so many stigmas attached to me.” But, she adds, knowing that she belongs in the conversation prevents her from being marginalized herself, an attitude she hopes to impart to others.
Bao Nakashima (16)
Bao Nakashima was mercilessly bullied at school after his family moved to Tokyo when he was eight years old. He decided to stop attending, initially being homeschooled, and then he decided to create his own curriculum so that he would focus on particular authors and subjects and attend as many seminars on them as he could locate in the metropolis. At the age of nine he contacted the editor who had worked with Marie Kondo to publish her popular books on organizing and decluttering. The editor encouraged Bao to write his thoughts and share them, and they became the book Seeing, Knowing, Thinking, which was published in 2016. Filled with apothegms such as “Even in the same place, if you look in a different direction, you will see a different view,” it became an immediate best seller in Japan. It has since been translated into several languages. While he was writing his book, Bao was accepted into the ROCKET Project, a program for gifted children supported by the Nippon Foundation and the University of Tokyo.
Tamara Patton (32)
Raised in Oahu, Hawaii, Tamara Patton studied international relations at the University of Washington. It was while taking a course with retired diplomat and ambassador Thomas Graham, Jr., that she became interested in the subject that has been her overarching field of study ever since: nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. After earning a master’s degree in nonproliferation studies from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, she worked as a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, focusing on arms control issues across the spectrum of weapon classes, from conventional to nuclear, and at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, where she focused on using technologies such as satellite imagery and virtual reality in nuclear verification. She is now a doctoral student in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, where her dissertation research centers on the use of satellite technology in arms control and verification. She also works on the implementation of international humanitarian law as it relates to the use of weaponry.
Vid Simoniti (37)
Born in Ljubljana, Vid Simoniti graduated from high school (gimnazija) in the Slovenian capital, then emigrated to England. He studied at the University of Reading, University College London, and the University of Oxford; he received a doctorate from the latter in 2015. He then joined the faculty of philosophy at the University of Liverpool, where he is bringing new vigor to the somewhat neglected field of aesthetics. What, Simoniti asks, does art that engages with the surrounding society look like? Can art be a medium for bringing about social, cultural, and political change? How do we place a value on beauty? To address such questions, Simoniti has turned to numerous media himself. He has curated art exhibits at the Ashmolean Museum and the National Gallery of Namibia, among other venues; he curates a podcast that interviews artists; he gives frequent public lectures; and he writes about art, books, philosophy, and other topics. In 2021 the BBC selected him as one of its New Generation Thinkers, providing new avenues for presenting his ideas on art and society.
Stefanie Stantcheva (35)
Born in Kritchim, Bulgaria, Stefanie Stantcheva moved with her family to Paris when she was six years old. She attended primary and secondary school there, then studied economics at the University of Cambridge, from which she received a bachelor’s degree. She followed with twin master’s degrees in economics and finance from the École Polytechnique and the École Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Économique (ENSAE), then took a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was honored with the 2019 Best Young Economist of France Award for her research. Comfortable in many languages and cultures, she is also fluent in mathematics, bringing quantitative rigor to her studies of economics in real life. At Harvard University, where she is now a full professor, she directs the Social Economics Lab, which she founded. Her principal scholarly interest is in the economics of taxation and its long-lasting knock-on effects on such things as education, research, and the accumulation of wealth. Using surveys and experiments, she examines how, for example, student loans might be structured to enhance equitable access to education and how federal policies on research and development can be used to spur innovation—in short, how the “dismal science,” as Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle famously dubbed economics, can be put to work guiding fiscal and social policy for better outcomes.