Georgia Tech Alumni Earn Spots on MIT Technology Review Innovators List

Three graduates of Georgia Tech’s College of Computing earned inclusion this week to MIT Technology Review’s “35 Innovators under 35,” an annual list recognizing people driving the next generation of technological breakthroughs.

The list honors innovators in five categories: inventors, entrepreneurs, visionaries, humanitarians and pioneers. To compile the list, MIT Technology Review editors solicited nominations, selected fewer than 100 finalists and asked a distinguished panel of judges to score each finalist on the originality and impact of their work. From those scores, editors compiled the final list of 35 innovators.

Dmitri Alperovitch, 32, was recognized in the entrepreneur category for his role in co-founding the security company CrowdStrike, which enables cyber-attack victims to strike back against cyber-espionage.

Vijay Balasubramaniyan, 33, was recognized in the inventor category for developing Pindrop Security, which enables its clients to determine the origins of fraudulent phone calls, including those attempting identity theft.

Julie Kientz, 33, was recognized in the visionary category for her work in using computing tools to help people with sleep disorders and families with autistic children.  She now works at the University of Washington, where she directs the Computing for Healthy Living and Learning Lab.

Alperovitch earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2001 and a master’s in information security in 2003, both at Georgia Tech. Balasubramaniyan earned a doctorate in computer science from Georgia Tech in 2011. Both men completed research at the College of Computing’s Information Security Center. Kientz earned her doctorate in computer science in 2008, completing her research in the School of Interactive Computing.