2011 FELLOWS
Thiel Fellows have a wide variety of backgrounds, interests, and abilities. But one element unites them: a passionate drive to transform the world for the better.
Ben Yu
Tech and buying thingsBen wants to expand the breadth of human opportunity. The drive for progress and the excitement of new adventures inspired him to leave Harvard after a single semester and extend his horizons, first by traveling around the world and climbing Kilimanjaro, and now through his startup Pricemash, which aims to radically improve our approach to the one thing we all do - shop.
Christopher Rueth
Information TechnologyPeople have the right to information they seek, the right to not be deceived, and the right to communicate with one another. Violation of these principles is something I despise.My passion is to increase people's awareness of their reality so that it can begin to change for the better. Technology and the Internet is usually a pretty effective means of doing this.
Dale J. Stephens
EducationDale was homeschooled, then unschooled. Today, he is a sought-after education expert appearing on major news networks including CNN, ABC, NPR, CBS, and Fox. His work has been covered by the New York Times and New York Magazine to Fast Company and Forbes. Dale founded UnCollege to prove that education isn’t limited to school. Perigee/Penguin will publish his first book, Hacking Your Education, a guide to gaining the skills that school doesn't teach, in early 2013. He loves dark chocolate almost as much as frequent flyer miles.
Daniel Friedman
TechDan was a sophomore at Yale studying Ethics, Politics, and Economics before leaving for the fellowship. He's currently working at Elm City Labs, helping entrepreneurs realize their visions.
Darren Zhu
ScienceWith research experience in a wide range of scientific fields, Darren aims to accelerate the pace of biotechnology research and development. He's currently working with David Luan on Dextro to build more versatile and intelligent laboratory automation solutions.
David Luan
RoboticsAndover man and Yale junior with a lifelong passion for robots. Has previously worked at iRobot's Research Group and as a Program Manager at Microsoft. Now working on removing the tedium and human error from lab research.
David Merfield
I'm working on Tablo, a tool for teachers to create and share lessons with their students.
Eden Full
Appropriate technologies, international developmentEden Full founded Roseicollis Technologies, an embryonic social enterprise to take her solar panel tracking invention called the SunSaluter, among other appropriate technologies, to developing communities and established markets that need them through local innovation, awareness and engagement. Proudly Canadian, she was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. In her spare time, she enjoys listening to Thrice, caring for her lovebird (Agapornis roseicollis) Kiwi Ganondorf “Birdie” Full, and is a rowing coxswain.
Eric McKay
Eric is a 21 year old graduate of Arizona State University. He is building a company that analyzes the effectiveness of offline marketing campaigns using novel sources of data. Eric has been programming since the 7th grade, and has experience working with big data sets for the Federal Reserve and several data-intensive research institutions.
Faheem Zaman
mobileAs mobile phones become increasingly common across the world, I'm working on leveraging this penetration to deliver services remotely through mobiles. I'm particularly interested in health, media and finance.
Gary Kurek
Mechanical EngineeringGary Kurek has been developing mobility aids for physically-disabled citizens for the last four years. Seeing his grandmother weakened by cancer led Gary to invent a walker-wheelchair hybrid that can provide power to assist its user according to how strong she feels at any moment. This flexibility allows users to restore their strength, instead of growing dependent on a substitute. Gary is currently working on expanding the versatility of his mobility aids, making them lighter, foldable, and capable of navigating any home environment including staircases. Gary hails from Alberta, Canada, and is the 19-year-old founder of GET Mobility Solutions.
James Proud
I like building things. Python, Lego, C, it's all good.
Jeffrey Lim
web developmentJeffrey Lim wants to bring our outmoded banking and currency institutions into the information age. He thinks that we are living in a crucial period in humanity's history, so it's important to get things right the first time.
Jim Danielson
Electric Vehicle MotorsIn 2009, with a friend Jim converted a Porsche 924s to electric. Since then, Jim has been interested in how electric vehicles can change transportation. He has built power electronics for the vehicles and is now working on an electric motor. It's a brushless dc motor without rare earth magnets. In little time it will be in the most efficient vehicles on the road.
John Burnham
TechnologyI applied to the Thiel Fellowship with an idea regarding the feasibility of resource extraction from Near Earth Objects. In the past six months, I've discovered that large, high capital expenditure projects with global ramifications and enormous positive impact run into several key challenges in deployment. I'm working on a project right now to solve these problems. Check back later for further details. Or contact me at jburnham@thielfellowship.org if you want to learn more.
John Marbach
communication techJohn has years of experience working as an Internet marketer in customer development—he founded a vacation rental portal as a high school freshman—and he blogs frequently about emerging technologies. Now, with his start-up Glider, he wants to build a smarter email client to solve email overload.
Alexander Kiselev
Scientific instrumentationAlexander Kiselev is a programmer, engineer, and hacker who thinks that the best way to continue the rapid rate of innovation in biotechnology and medicine is to open up the field to every garage, hobbyist, and scientist in developing countries. He is working on making open source scientific equipment which cost anywhere from five to ten times less than existing products by reducing the sales and maintenance overhead while increasing automation, integration, and ease of use. Born in Moscow, Alexander immigrated to the United States at the age of 5 and spent much of his childhood tinkering with computers and electronics while spending summers at his mother's biology labs. He has since seen first hand how the cost of even the most basic scientific equipment stifles innovation and makes original research in biology prohibitive to all but well funded organizations.
Laura Deming
BiotechnologyLaura Deming wants to extend the human lifespan for a few more centuries—at the very least. She started working in a biogerontology lab when she was 12, matriculated at MIT when she was 14, and now at 17 plans on disrupting the current research paradigm by changing the incentives embedded in today’s traditional funding structures.
Nick Cammarata
CodeNick Cammarata left Carnegie Mellon's computer science program to co-found Tablo, a tool for teachers. Previously, he co-founded an file storage application that received 80 million visitors, worked for institutions and corporations such as Harvard, Stanford, Mozilla, and Microsoft, and helped create Popcorn.js, a JavaScript library for HTML5 video.
Paul Gu
Paul had completed 3 years of credits at Yale University when he decided to pursue the Thiel Fellowship. He and his co-founder, Eric Mckay, have a deep interest in questions of efficiency and in using market principles to make life better. Paul has previously worked for D.E. Shaw & Co., several social enterprises, and a few start-ups. He has always liked to take initiative on building things, whether it was making a simple website in high school to share advice with younger students, or writing himself a program to do research on investment ideas during his sophomore year at Yale.
Sebastien Zany
MathematicsInterested in programming language theory
Sujay Tyle
Energy, TechnologySujay was one of the youngest students at Harvard, until he left during his Junior Year. For six years since the age of 11, Sujay conducted biofuel research surrounding the conversion of cellulose to ethanol for which he won the International Energy Olympiad and was named one of the Top Young Scientists across New York. Since then, he and his older brother, Sheel Tyle - now a Venture Capitalist - have co-founded and ran ReSight, Inc. - a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to eradicating blindness.With the Thiel Fellowship, Sujay will lead Business Development and Strategy at Los Angeles based start-up, Scopely.
Tom Currier
Solar Energy, Cost ReductionTom Currier's dream is to become a successful inventor, and after starting his first business at nine, he began to use entrepreneurship as a creative outlet. Passionate about renewable energy, Currier co-founded Black Swan Solar two years ago to commercialize an invention that will fundamentally disrupt utility scale solar. Please checkout the following website for more information: http://www.sandbox-network.com/meet-a-sandboxer/meet-a-sandboxer-tom-currier/
