With a bachelors in Creative Studies and a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry, Angela Belcher has made a career out of finding surprising and innovative solutions to energy problems.

After studying abalone shells as a graduate at the University of California, she was inspired by how the shell, despite being made of a common mineral, is 3,000 times stronger than the chalk that makes up 98% of it. She thus began work on programming viruses that have helped lead to new pathways for organizing molecules in ways to form new revolutionary materials. Products of this research include powerful new batteries, clean hydrogen fuels, and record-breaking solar cells.

As head of the Biomolecular Materials Group at MIT, Belcher brings together the fields of materials chemistry, electrical engineering and molecular biology to engineer viruses that can create batteries and clean energy sources. A MacArthur Fellow, she also founded Cambrios Technologies, a Cambridge-based startup focused on applying her work with natural biological systems to the manufacture and assembly of electronic, magnetic and other commercially important materials, as well as Siluria Technologies. TIME magazine named her a climate-change hero in 2007.