Sergey Mikhailovich Brin is an American businessman best known for co-founding Google with Larry Page. Brin was the president of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., until stepping down from the role on December 3, 2019. He and Page remain at Alphabet as co-founders, controlling shareholders and board members. As of November 2023, Brin is the 10th-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $111 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by MIT Technology Review magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35.
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American businessman, computer programmer, and philanthropist. He co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is executive chairman, chief executive officer and controlling shareholder.
Anne E. Wojcicki is an American entrepreneur who co-founded and serves as CEO of the personal genomics company 23andMe. She founded the company in 2006 with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza to provide the general public access to their genetic information. She is a co-founder and board member of the Breakthrough Prize. Wojcicki married Google co-founder Sergey Brin in 2007, and divorced eight years later.
Cornelia Isabella "Cori" Bargmann is an American neurobiologist. She is known for her work on the genetic and neural circuit mechanisms of behavior using C. elegans, particularly the mechanisms of olfaction in the worm. She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and had been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at UCSF and then Rockefeller University from 1995 to 2016. She was the Head of Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative from 2016 to 2022. In 2012 she was awarded the $1 million Kavli Prize, and in 2013 the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
Alexei Yurievich Kitaev is a Russian–American professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology and permanent member of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. He is best known for introducing the quantum phase estimation algorithm and the concept of the topological quantum computer while working at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. He is also known for introducing the complexity class QMA and showing the 2-local Hamiltonian problem is QMA-complete, the most complete result for k-local Hamiltonians. Kitaev is also known for contributions to research on a model relevant to researchers of the AdS/CFT correspondence started by Subir Sachdev and Jinwu Ye; this model is known as the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev (SYK) model.
The Global Energy Prize is an international award in the field of energy industry which is given for "outstanding scientific research and scientific-technical developments in the field of energy which promote greater efficiency and environmental security for energy sources on Earth in the interests of all mankind".
Yuri Borisovich (Bentsionovich) Milner is a Soviet-born Israeli entrepreneur, investor, physicist and scientist. He is a cofounder and former chairperson of internet company Mail.Ru Group, and a founder of investment firm DST Global. Through DST Global, Milner is an investor in Byju's, Facebook, Wish, and many other enterprises.
Stanley George Wojcicki was a Polish American professor emeritus and former chair of the physics department at Stanford University in California.
The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics is one of the Breakthrough Prizes, awarded by the Breakthrough Prize Board. Initially named Fundamental Physics Prize, it was founded in July 2012 by Russia-born Israeli entrepreneur, venture capitalist and physicist Yuri Milner. The prize is awarded to physicists from theoretical, mathematical, or experimental physics that have made transformative contributions to fundamental physics, and specifically for recent advances.
The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences is a scientific award, funded by internet entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan of Facebook; Sergey Brin of Google; entrepreneur and venture capitalist Yuri Milner; and Anne Wojcicki, one of the founders of the genetics company 23andMe.
Meta ULC was a Canadian unlimited liability corporation performing big data analysis of scientific literature, which was acquired by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and shut down in 2021, effective in 2022.
The Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics is an annual award of the Breakthrough Prize series announced in 2013.
Breakthrough Initiatives is a science-based program founded in 2015 and funded by Julia and Yuri Milner, also of Breakthrough Prize, to search for extraterrestrial intelligence over a span of at least 10 years. The program is divided into multiple projects. Breakthrough Listen will comprise an effort to search over 1,000,000 stars for artificial radio or laser signals. A parallel project called Breakthrough Message is an effort to create a message "representative of humanity and planet Earth". The project Breakthrough Starshot, co-founded with Mark Zuckerberg, aims to send a swarm of probes to the nearest star at about 20% the speed of light. The project Breakthrough Watch aims to identify and characterize Earth-sized, rocky planets around Alpha Centauri and other stars within 20 light years of Earth. Breakthrough plans to send a mission to Saturn's moon Enceladus, in search for life in its warm ocean, and in 2018 signed a partnership agreement with NASA for the project.
Priscilla Chan is an American philanthropist and a former pediatrician. She and her husband, Mark Zuckerberg, a co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms, established the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in December 2015, with a pledge to transfer 99 percent of their Facebook shares, then valued at $45 billion. She attended Harvard University and received her medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is an organization established and owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan with an investment of 99 percent of the couple's wealth from their Facebook shares over their lifetime. The CZI is set up as a limited liability company (LLC) and is an example of philanthrocapitalism. CZI has been deemed likely to be "one of the most well-funded philanthropies in human history". Its creation was announced on 1 December 2015, for the birth of their daughter, Maxima Chan Zuckerberg. Priscilla Chan has said that her background as a child of immigrant refugees and experience as a teacher and pediatrician for vulnerable children influences how she approaches the philanthropy's work in science, education, immigration reform, housing, criminal justice, and other local issues.
Breakthrough Starshot is a research and engineering project by the Breakthrough Initiatives to develop a proof-of-concept fleet of light sail interstellar probes named Starchip, to be capable of making the journey to the Alpha Centauri star system 4.34 light-years away. It was founded in 2016 by Yuri Milner, Stephen Hawking, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Clinatec is a biomedical research center based at the Polygone Scientifique in Grenoble. Doctors, biologists and micro- and nanotechnology experts work side by side at the 6,000 m2 facility. Around a hundred researchers and employees work at the center. When it opened at the end of 2011, it was hailed as the first center of its kind in the world. With six hospital rooms, cutting-edge medical imaging equipment and an operating suite, Clinatec was developed by the Research Division of the CEA, Grenoble-Alpes University Hospital (CHU), Inserm and the Université Grenoble Alpes. The primary focus is on cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and disability.
Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, or simply Biohub, is a nonprofit research organization. In addition to supporting and conducting original research, CZ Biohub acts as a hub and fosters science collaboration between UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco (UCSF) and Stanford. The Biohub is funded by a $600 million contribution from Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. It was co-led by Stephen Quake and Joseph DeRisi from its inception in 2016 until 2022, when Quake left to become president of the Biohub Network. Sandra Schmid joined as Chief Scientific Officer in 2020.
Ijad Madisch is a German virologist, founder and CEO of the research network ResearchGate and member of the Digital Council (Digitalrat) of the Cabinet of Germany (Bundesregierung).
