The following young researchers were honored by Forbes:

Rizia Bardhan, 29, postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She studies nanotech particles that can diagnose or treat disease and new ways of storing energy.

Mozziyar Etemadi, 25, UCSF graduate student. He is developing a mobile device to detect pre-term labor in high-risk pregnancies and alert physicians via the cloud.

James Fraser, 29, UCSF postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3). He uses computation and biophysics to discover mutations that cause disease.

Albert Mach, 25, UCLA graduate student. His centrifuge on a chip could provide a rapid way to detect cancer via a blood test.

Ryan Tewhey, 29, UC San Diego graduate student. He is using DNA sequencing to figure out what makes the MRSA super-germ so very deadly and hard to kill.