Nuclear Engineer and environmentalist Leslie Dewan spent the first ten years of her career redesigning nuclear reactors to make them safer and reducing the amount of waste they produce. Together with a classmate from MIT, she created and served as CEO for Transatomic Power, reimagining a 1960s design for a molten salt reactor. This World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and her team raised millions from VC firms, successfully lobbied for updated nuclear policy, and made an astonishing run at the design before realizing they wouldn’t be first to market, so they pivoted.  Rather than hoarding the data, Leslie and her partner did something truly revolutionary: they open-sourced it for the world’s benefit.  As Leslie says, “I became a nuclear engineer because I wanted to save the world.”

Leslie earned a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering with a research focus on computational nuclear materials from MIT, where she also earned S.B. degrees in mechanical engineering and nuclear engineering. She has served on the MIT Corporation, MIT’s board of trustees, and on the National Academy of Engineering’s study, “Laying the Foundation for New and Advanced Nuclear Reactors in the United States.” Leslie has been named a TIME Magazine "30 People Under 30 Changing the World," an MIT Technology Review "Innovator Under 35," and a National Geographic Explorer.