3 Rice alumni make Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list for 2017

Three Rice University alumni made this year’s Forbes’ 30 Under 30, an honor roll of people under 30 years old who are the “brightest young entrepreneurs, innovators and game changers.” Forbes magazine featured 30 honorees on each of the lists for 20 industries.

Lydia Kisley

Lydia Kisley, who earned a master’s and Ph.D. in chemistry at Rice in 2013 and 2015, respectively, is on the Change-makers and Innovators in Health Care list.

Kisley, the Beckman Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, uses new technologies to take pictures of chemicals at a nanoscale level to better manipulate them. According to Forbes, her projects include showing that proteins clump in the presence of gold nanoparticles only when they are in low concentrations and new efforts to understand how drug molecules fit together, which could allow scientists to find the porous spaces in any nanotech particle. Kisley studied under Christy Landes, an associate professor of chemistry and of electrical and computer engineering.

Alumnus Rhae Adams ’12 is on the Manufacturing and Industry list. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics.

Rhae Adams

Adams, “asteroid miner” and director of energy and mining for the business development team at Planetary Resources Inc., is helping to develop a market for mined materials from asteroids, including water and industrial metals. Planetary Resources raised more than $30 million in 2016 for its asteroid prospecting system. “If a gay 26-year-old with an economics degree and no prior aerospace background can impact how humanity will manufacture and build infrastructure in space, anyone can,” Adams told Forbes.

Tony Chen, who attended Rice but left before graduating, is on the Marketing and Advertising list.

Tony Chen

Chen founded Channel Factory, an online video distribution and data company, in 2010 while studying economics and classical piano at Rice. With predictive analytics, the platform helps advertisers and agencies more effectively and efficiently advertise on YouTube. Clients include Nestle, MediaCom and OMD, according to Forbes.

Click here to view the entire list of honorees for 2017.