Every revolution begins with a question nobody thought to ask. Not “can we do this?” but “should we do this differently?”
Nanotechnology promised us a future built atom by atom—smarter materials, targeted medicines, cleaner energy. The science delivered. Labs worldwide can now manipulate matter at scales a million times smaller than a grain of sand, engineering properties that nature never imagined. Yet somewhere between the breakthrough and the breakthrough moment, we lost sight of a more fundamental question: who does this science serve, and at what cost?
This edition of our magazine exists because that question now has answers worth celebrating. Top Leaders in Nanotechnology, 2025 features individuals who refused to let their innovations remain trapped in academic journals or locked behind corporate doors. They built companies, fought through clinical trials, challenged environmental norms, and proved that the smallest particles could solve our largest problems—if deployed with intention.
Our cover story introduces you to Dr. Michael L. Curry, a Professor of Nanoengineering and the Inaugural Faculty Fellow at the Center for Excellence in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at North Carolina A&T State University who works with nanocellulose derived from plants to replace petroleum-based plastics. His journey from Tuskegee University, where he became the first professor to secure a U.S. patent alongside an African American student co-inventor, to founding EPM, LLC reveals something rare in science: a refusal to separate discovery from impact. Curry doesn’t just research sustainable materials; he commercializes them, building an ecosystem where diversity drives innovation and students learn that nanotechnology can address challenges their communities actually face.
Inside these pages, you’ll meet others who turned molecular precision into market transformation. One invented gold particles that cook tumors with light, sparing patients the brutality of traditional cancer treatment. Another taught viruses to grow batteries at room temperature, eliminating the toxic chemistry that poisons both workers and ecosystems. A third programmed nanoparticles to silence the genes that make cancer cells drug-resistant, then delivered chemotherapy before defenses could rebuild. These aren’t futurists—they’re builders who spent decades translating theory into therapies, materials, and manufacturing processes that work today.
Our case study examines how three distinct approaches to cancer treatment—photothermal destruction, programmable drug delivery, and localized polymer release—converged on a single insight: if you can’t change the drug, change how it arrives. The result? Survival rates that climbed, side effects that vanished, and patients who walked away from diseases that once guaranteed suffering.
Nanotechnology stopped being theoretical the moment someone decided it should. The leaders in this edition made that decision, then spent years proving it wasn’t arrogance—it was necessity. The invisible became infrastructure. The impossible became standard care. And the scientists became something rarer: architects of change who refused to wait for permission.
This is what happens when brilliance meets impatience, when discovery refuses to stay discovered. Read on.
