Ed Boyden: The brain engineer

At the end of his junior year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998, Ed Boyden was hanging out with friends in the basement of the famed Media Lab, trying to figure out what to do for the summer. "We saw this competition online and thought, hey, that's cool," recalls Boyden of the first International Underwater Vehicle Competition. "None of us knew anything about submarines at all." Eight weeks later, the initial crew had expanded to a team of about 30 and took home first prize with the autonomously navigating submarine they built.