Age: 42

Position: Associate Professor in the Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Pharmacy 

Institution: University of Southern Denmark

Nationality: American

Fun Fact: He's the founder of a vintage bicycle club chapter. He also speaks Italian and Danish.

To demonstrate how early life may have formed on Earth, Hanczyc makes chemical droplets, called "protocells," that behave like living cells. Specifically they behave like the first pre-life chemical compositions — stripped down versions of cell containing only the most fundamental chemicals of a cell.

In these droplets he can simulate how the chemical precursors to life became the cells we know today.

Age: 44

Position: Co-Director an architectural research group

Institution: University of Greenwich

Nationality: British

Fun Fact: She enjoys writing science fiction.

Armstrong uses artificial cells that have life-like qualities (but are not fully alive) to create sustainable construction materials that can (hopefully) repair themselves after a crack, bend, or break.

She thinks this type of technology could be used to prevent Venice from sinking. And, these semi-living materials would also take up carbon dioxide (a potent greenhouse gas that drives climate change) from the atmosphere.

Age: 32

Position: Physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Brigham & Women's Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School

Institution: Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Nationality: American

Fun Fact: His brother and his fiancee live in Nicaragua, where they run surf and yoga retreats. 

Obermeyer is an emergency medicine physician at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston. Besides practicing medicine, he researches population health outcomes to see how to improve health care in the United States and abroad.

In 2012 he recieved an NIH Director's Early Independence Award to examine why some people die unexpectedly after being seen and discharged from emergency rooms, so doctors can identify patients that are at high risk of dying after being discharged.

Age: 26

Position: Bioengineer and senior scientist

Institution: Integrated Plasmonics Corporation

As a graduate student Mach designed tiny chips that can separate out cells from fluids and perform tests using blood, pleural effusions, and urine to detect cancers and monitor them over time.

He's currently working in super-secret "stealth mode" for the nanotechnology company Integrated Plasmonics Corporation, so we can't tell you what he is researching. The company just raised $3.5 Million, announced in SEC Fillings on Feb.17.

Age: 42

Position: Experimental particle physicist and professor of physics at Caltech

Institution: Caltech

Nationality: Greek 

Fun Fact: She's the great-grand-child of Enrico Fermi in Ph.D lineage — which means her graduate adviser's adviser's adviser was the great Enrico Fermi who played a key role in the development of basic physics.

Spiropulu develops experiments to search for dark matter and other theories that go beyond the Standard Model, which describes how the particles we know of interact. Her work is helping to fill in holes and deficiencies in that model. She works with data from the Large Hadron Collider.

Age: 36

Position: Biomedical engineer, professor at UC Irvine, and co-Founder at Shrink Nanotechnologies

Institution: University of California, Irvine and Shrink Nanotechnologies

Nationality: American

Fun fact: She set a world speed record of 38.4 mph for a human-powered vehicle as a mechanical engineering grad student at UC Berkeley in 2000.

Khine uses Shrinky Dinks — a favorite childhood toy that shrinks when you bake it in the oven — to build microfluidic chips to create affordable tests for diseases in developing countries.

These chips can be printed out easily, then baked to shrink them down to size. They are cheaper and easier to make than traditional microfluidic chips and are entirely customizable.

Age: 26

Position: Experimental nuclear physicist and grad student at Michigan State University

Institution: Michigan State University

Nationality: American

Fun Fact: When he's not in the lab, he's probably cycling or home brewing. He also enjoy long walks on the beach, soft animals, and talking about his feelings.

Stroberg studies the structure of the nucleus of atoms (the part made of protons and neutrons) by smashing atoms together at high speeds and measuring the gamma-rays that are emitted. The spectrum of gamma rays that comes out — unique to each atom made by the crash — provides information about how protons and neutrons interact with each other inside the nucleus.

Age: 36

Position Mathematician and university lecturer

Institution: The University of Sydney

Nationality: Australian 

Fun Fact: If she's not at her desk brain working, you'll find her at the gym either bench pressing her body weight or hanging upside down from the gym rings.

The author of "Mathematics and Sex," Cresswell uses math to understand how humans should find their partners. She came up with what she calls the "12 Bonk Rule," which means that singles have a greater chance of finding their perfect partner after they date 12 people.

Age: 50 

Position: Physicist and professor

Institution: Harvard University

Nationality: American 

Fun fact: She wrote the lyrics to an opera that premiered in Pairs and has an eclectic taste in movies.

Randall is considered to be one of the nation's foremost theoretical physicists, with an expertise in particle physics and cosmology. The math whiz from Queens is best known for her models of string theory and study of extra dimensions. 

The Sexiest Scientists Alive!