How we picked 35 of the world’s top young scientists and engineers

Next month, on September 8, MIT Technology Review will reveal its 2026 list of Innovators Under 35, recognizing 35 young people from around the world who are doing groundbreaking scientific work and building clever technical fixes for sticky problems. 

By finding the top young innovators globally and learning what they’re focused on in their work, we aim to give readers a sense of what advances to expect in the years to come. As a newsroom, we also use this exercise to help us spot rising talent and get to know some of the best early-career researchers in the fields that we cover. 

The editors of MIT Technology Review published the first Innovators Under 35 list in 1999, and it’s become a beloved annual tradition alongside our lists of 10 Breakthrough Technologies, 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch, and (new this year) 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now. 

The people we’ve featured through the years have gone on to shape the tech industry and our broader culture, from Lisa Su (featured in 2002), whose stunning turnaround of AMD has built it into one of the top chipmakers worldwide, to Daniel Ek (featured in 2012), who cofounded Spotify (which we described at the time as “a jukebox in the cloud”). Subscribers can browse all the past honorees in this database. 

Selecting the 2026 Innovators was a monthslong endeavor. This year, we received 550 nominations, both from staff and via our public nomination process. From those entries, our editors selected 110 semifinalists. We looked for candidates who were setting out to solve big problems or answer pressing scientific questions in their work, and who had already made clear progress toward their goals. 

All semifinalists then completed an application to help us learn more about them. They collected reference letters, uploaded videos, and submitted résumés. Forty-four expert judges then helped us evaluate these applications. Some of these judges are former Innovators themselves. Many have returned year after year to volunteer their time, energy, and expertise to the judging process. We’re grateful for their efforts. 

In the end, our editors reviewed all of the judges’ scores and comments and selected the 35 winners. Each works in one of four categories: biotechnology, artificial intelligence, computing and robotics, and climate and energy. 

“These Innovators represent some of the best aspects of science and technology research—pushing forward bold ideas to improve the future for everyone,” says Costa Samaras, a 2026 judge who is also the director of Carnegie Mellon’s Scott Institute for Energy Innovation. 

The 2026 list of Innovators will be available to MIT Technology Review subscribers on our site on September 8. To access the package when it comes out online, you can subscribe now via this link. It will also be published in the September/October issue, which will be available on newsstands worldwide on August 31. 

Do you know someone who deserves a spot on next year’s list? Nominations for the 2027 competition will open by early December. Check back then or sign up for our daily newsletter The Download to stay in the loop.