Todd Park

Geeks are a critical driver of America's innovation ecosystem, from the entrepreneurs launching startups in Silicon Valley to the scientists experimenting in university research labs to the whiz kids building gadgets in their parents' garages.

To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation of a mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you have posed, you will meditate your question with care and frame it with precision.

I want to tell mayors, county chiefs and heads of big companies: don't just chase GDP growth; don't chase the biggest profits at the expense of our children and grandchildren and at the cost of sacrificing our ecological environment.

I'm a traditional Jew with an orthodox background, and it informs much of my approach to science. Of course I think it's very important that if you have those sorts of backgrounds you don't impose them on other people as a clinician, of course.