Design News' 2007 Engineer of the Year

Martin Fisher co-founded KickStart in Kenya in 1991 to change the way the world fights poverty. To date nearly 50,000 new micro-enterprises have been started in East Africa using KickStart equipment and 800 more are being started each month. These businesses generate over $52 million in new profits and wages each year. Farmers using KickStart's manual irrigation pumps on average see a ten-fold increase in net farm income. This propels their families from poverty into the middle class. Together the revenue generated by these new businesses is equivalent to over 0.5% of Kenya's GDP, and 0.2% of Tanzania's GDP. By bringing together the incredible entrepreneurial spirit of the world's poorest people, innovative tools and technologies, and the power of the marketplace, Martin and KickStart have helped over 250,000 people escape from poverty.

Read more about Martin Fisher

When Cisco decided to develop TelePresence, an innovative new technology for global meetings, they needed a top hardware design engineer who could develop a technology that would allow the participants to look and feel as if they were present in the same room. Who better than Michael Dhuey, the person who designed Apple's wildly popular iPod? After 25 years at Apple, Dhuey joined Cisco's TelePresence team. Dhuey had created the hugely successful iPod in stealth mode so Apple could bring it to market by Christmas 2001; by 2007, a reported 70 million iPods had been sold worldwide. Prior to designing the iPod, Dhuey designed the Macintosh II computer. He began programming at age 14 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and by 16 was working as a programmer at Northwestern Mutual. He earned a BS in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison before joining Apple in 1980. A person committed to making a difference in the world, Dhuey holds 14 patents and is an avid runner.

Read more about Michael Dhuey

Dieter Ramsauer is a world-class innovator in the field of hinging and latching technology. He holds approx. 250 patents, many of which have evolved into industry standards for latching and access hardware. Started in 1991, DIRAK now has operations and rep organizations in more than 40 countries. Some of Dieter's technology innovations include: Modular Design, which allows countless product combinations to be used with the same panel preparation, Design Symmetry (the ability to rotate doors 180 degrees, which means the same products can be used on right- and left-handed doors), the Swinghandle and, most recently, D-SNAP Technology for tool-less assembly.

Read more about Dieter Ramsauer

In 1989, Scott Crump invented and patented Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) - a technology that uses an extrusion process to generate three-dimensional models. Stratasys Inc., the company Crump started to develop his technology, has since become a leader in the rapid prototyping industry. Today the company holds more than 175 granted and pending patents focused on prototyping and related technologies. Crump is a registered professional engineer.

Robotics have only recently begun to shed their science fiction image and make real in-roads into the home, and no one is more responsible for that newfound success than Colin Angle. Angle, CEO of iRobot, is the brains behind the popular Roomba home vacuum cleaner, which has surprised experts in the appliance field by hitting the two-million mark in sales. Angle, who holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a masters in computer science from MIT, has also designed behavior-controlled rovers for use on the surface of Mars and has carved out a business niche for navigation robots that tackle dangerous missions, such as disarming bombs.

Chemical engineer Dr. Robert Langer is an Institute Professor at MIT who has made numerous significant technological breakthroughs at the intersection of biotechnology and materials science through his Langer Lab. His most important contribution is the development of the polymeric systems that allow medical implants, notably coronary stents, to release drugs on a time-released basis inside the human body. He's also doing amazing work on shape memory polymers for medical applications as well as polymer scaffolds that could be deployed inside a human body to build new organs.

A physician with a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, Todd Kuiken has performed the seemingly impossible task of creating an artificial limb that enables wearers to feel. Kuiken, who has worked on the concept for more than 20 years, has enabled test patients to feel the touch of other human beings on their artificial hands, and is working on enabling them to use their hands to simultaneously squeeze and feel.

Gass, a lawyer with a Ph.D. in physics, shocked the power tool industry by developing a skin-sensing table saw that potentially could prevent thousands of woodworkers from losing fingers every year. After giving up a lucrative job as a patent attorney to start a barn-based saw business, Gass has spent the last seven years petitioning the Consumer Products Safety Commission and battling with industry heavyweights over adoption of the technology.

Ives, principal designer of the iMac, iPod and iPhone, is listed as one of four inventors on the Apple patent granted for the process March 1. The original iMac was jointly designed by Ives and Steve Jobs and is credited with helping save Apple from bankruptcy. Apple spends 10-15 percent of its design time on concept, significantly more than other computer companies. The design team at Apple has significant clout and creates strong, simple designs that give Apple products a unique family look. They often throw engineering rules to the wind to meet design goals. Example: They have disregarded requirements for draft in favor of a box look that creates a distinctive Apple feel. Apple also makes great use of suppliers' unique manufacturing capabilities. One example: Apple uses double-shot molding, a close relative of two-shot molding that places clear plastics over colored plastics, often creating a back-lit feel. He holds a Bachelor of Arts and an honorary doctorate from Newcastle Polytechnic.

Kurian is leading the drive at DuPont to develop engineering polymers that are made, at least in part, from sustainable resources, specifically corn. DuPont is commercializing a process that derives a product called Bio-PDO from corn sugar using a patented fermentation process involving engineered organisms. DuPont is now beta testing a new family of high-performance thermoplastic resins and elastomer products made with the renewable feedstock. Kurian says the new polymers will actually have improved performance profiles compared to many competing polymers. Applications will include automotive, appliances and connectors. Kurian, a degreed engineer, has a Ph.D in polymer science.

An inventor since college, James Dyson set out to manufacture his own vacuum cleaner in June 1993, when he opened a research center and factory near his home in England. After years of effort and thousands of prototypes, Dyson came up with the Dyson Cyclone, the first vacuum cleaner that didn't lose suction. Dyson's vacuum, now sold in 22 countries, almost wasn't made due to patent fees and legal costs incurred by Dyson as he was forced to defend his invention against patent infringement. In 1999, Hoover UK tried to imitate Dyson and he was back in court again; 18 months later, he finally won a victory against Hoover UK for patent infringement. In March 2007, Dyson released yet another innovation: the Dyson Slim, a lightweight version of its Cyclone technology.