Seven Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets on Forbes 30 Under 30 List

Seven young people with ties to Georgia Tech appear on Forbes magazine’s 2016 list of the brightest minds in America under the age of 30. The magazine annually selects men and women across several categories and highlights their accomplishments. They are movers and shakers in their fields who are not letting their age get in the way of their success.

The seven Yellow Jackets make appearances in six different categories: Science, Manufacturing and Engineering, Retail and Ecommerce, Energy, and Marketing and Advertising, and Healthcare. They represent four of Georgia Tech’s six colleges: College of Sciences, College of Engineering, College of Computing, and the Scheller College of Business.

Science: Lujendra Ojha
Ojha, a Ph.D. candidate in planetary science, studied unusual geologic features on Mars imaged by a NASA spacecraft. He observed that they looked like the results of flowing water on Earth. His team’s subsequent research proved that right, leading to NASA’s announcement that water flows on Mars. Ojha is also an experienced heavy metal guitarist.

Manufacturing & Industry: Allen Chang
Chang graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in biomedical engineering in 2008. He founded Vertera Spine Inc., the first company to manufacture an FDA-approved synthetic replacement for bone in the human body. While at Georgia Tech, Chang also worked to develop a device to make medical injections easier and researched how to make better wheelchair cushions.

Retail and Ecommerce: Candace Mitchell
Mitchell, a computer science graduate, co-founded Techturized Inc. with fellow Yellow Jacket and engineer Chanel Martin. The company uses technology to make an impact on the $3 billion African-American hair-care industry. One of the first ventures, Myavana, is a mobile app that helps women find the best hair-care products for their unique needs.

Energy: Emily Woods
Woods is a mechanical engineering graduate who moved to Kenya after founding a company geared toward helping improve sanitation in third-world countries. Woods designed a method for turning human waste into sustainable fuel and piloted a test project at a refugee camp.

Energy: Alec Manfre
Manfre earned his degree from Georgia Tech in mechanical engineering and is CEO and co-founder of Bractlet. The company uses specialized technology to determine equipment-level data on electrical usage, helping building and business owners cut their energy costs. While an undergraduate, Manfre was also an exchange student at the National University of Singapore.

Marketing and Advertising: Paris Rouzati
Rouzati manages marketing for an up-and-coming provider of personal web pages, about.me. She’s responsible for promotion, social media, and strategic partnerships and specializes in Millennial and Gen Z user behavior. While an undergraduate at the Scheller College of Business, Rouzati helped launched a digital lifestyle magazine and blog that grew to reach an audience of more than 200,000 women.

Healthcare: Josh Allen
Josh Allen completed his Ph.D. in 2012 at the University of Pennsylvania, after receiving his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Georgia Tech in 2008. Allen is vice president of research and development for Oncoceutics, a company using his discovery to develop a drug that can kill cancer cells without harming healthy cells.