MIT Technology Review/Jonathan W. Rosen: He created an affordable fix for one of the most vexing problems for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa

MIT Technology Review

35 Innovators Under 35

    Isaac Sesi

    He created an affordable fix for one of the most vexing problems for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa
    Jason Buenrostro

    A tinkerer figures out how to tell which genes are active inside a cell
    Silvia Caballero

    Training helpful bacteria to fight the world’s most dangerous pathogens
    Dawei Di

    His LED materials are cheaper and easier on the environment than ones now in use
    Olga Dudchenko

    She created a better way to sequence a genome
    Abhinav Kandala

    Paving the way for quantum-computer-powered drug and material development
    Marc Lajoie

    Programming white blood cells to fight cancer
    Ritu Raman

    She’s developed inchworm-size robots made partly of biological tissue and muscle
    Brandon Sorbom

    His high-temperature superconductors could make fusion reactors much cheaper to build
    Archana Venkataraman

    We still don’t know much about neurological disorders. She’s using AI to change that.

MIT Technology Review

35 Innovators Under 35
Inventors

They’re creating the innovations that lead to practical quantum computers and CRISPR treatments.
Photograph of Isaac Sesi
Isaac Sesi

26
Sesi Technologies
Country of birth: Ghana
He created an affordable fix for one of the most vexing problems for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa
by Jonathan W. Rosen

Isaac Sesi built a gadget he believes can tackle one of the biggest risks faced by farmers across Africa: the contamination of grains following harvest.

Sesi’s product, GrainMate, allows famers and grain purchasers to affordably measure moisture levels of maize, rice, wheat, millet, sorghum, and other staples. It’s designed for a simple yet persistent problem: according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, more than 20% of sub--Saharan Africa’s cereal output is lost or wasted, often because grains aren’t dried sufficiently before they’re stored. Grain stored while moist can develop aflatoxins—contaminants produced by fungi that are harmful to humans and animals.

In Sesi’s native Ghana, individual farmers often sell their harvests to aggregators or animal feed producers; if one farmer’s crops are too moist they risk spoiling the entire batch. Although imported moisture detection devices are available, few farmers in Ghana can afford the nearly $400 price tag. “That might be half of what a farmer is making from his entire field” per harvest, Sesi says.

Sesi learned by dissecting broken radios and other abandoned gadgets with the help of a library book.

Sesi, who grew up without electricity or running water and often went to school hungry, spent much of his childhood tinkering with electronic devices. He learned by dissecting broken radios and other abandoned gadgets with the help of a book from his school library. He long sought a way to apply that passion to a field that could have a social impact—and in 2017, as a recent electrical engineering graduate, he got his chance. A United States Agency for International Development project operating in partnership with his school, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, had recently designed a grain-moisture meter for the local market. But it wanted to bring the cost down and find a way to produce the device in Ghana.

Sesi was their man: with the help of a small team, he streamlined the original device, redesigned its circuit board, built an accompanying mobile app, and found five Ghanaian subcontractors to make components that had previously been sourced from China. Sesi’s device sells for $80—less than one-fourth as much as existing alternatives. Sesi and his team are now developing a more efficient version of the meter and a second product to help farmers identify ideal soil inputs. They’re also raising funds to expand to the bigger markets in Kenya and Nigeria. Ultimately, Sesi believes he can help farmers across the continent cut wastage, minimize economic losses, and improve the safety of their products.

Jonathan W. Rosen Guest contributor

Jonathan W. Rosen is a journalist reporting from sub-Saharan Africa.
Photograph of Jason Buenrostro
Jason Buenrostro

31
Harvard University
Country of birth: US
A tinkerer figures out how to tell which genes are active inside a cell
by Karen Weintraub

After Jason Buenrostro graduated from Santa Clara University with a degree in biology and engineering, he went to work in a lab at Stanford, overseeing an $800,000 gene sequencing machine.

He wanted to understand the effects of the genetic mutations his machine detected. But many of the mutated genes he found were considered junk because they didn’t direct the production of proteins. So in his graduate research at Stanford, he pivoted to developing methods for measuring these underexplored regions.

DNA is essentially identical from cell to cell, but a kidney cell differs from a brain cell in the activity of those genes. Regions of DNA need to be tightly wound to fit inside the nucleus, and only open DNA regions can be active.

Buenrostro and his colleagues developed a tool called ATAC-seq to measure these open regions of the genome, many of which don’t make proteins but regulate genetic activity. “I didn’t realize how useful [a tool] it would be for people. It kind of exploded,” says Buenrostro, noting that ATAC-seq now has its own Wikipedia page.

More recently, Buenrostro has further developed the technology to identify open DNA at the level of a single cell. With this tool, researchers can determine which genes are active in single cells, studying how these cells sometimes develop into cells of new types, and how some functions go awry in disease.

Buenrostro wants to use these methods to learn new basic information about the differences between healthy and diseased cells and to use this information to engineer new behaviors into cells as they develop and mature.

Buenrostro, who now oversees a lab of 10, says, “I want to understand cell fate decisions to ultimately be able to engineer cells to do whatever I would like them to”—for instance, fighting cancer.

Karen Weintraub Guest contributor

Karen Weintraub is a freelance writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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