Nearly 60 of UC’s youngest innovators featured on the 2026 Forbes “30 Under 30” list

January 29, 2026
UC Newsroom

An M.D. and Ph.D. candidate at UC San Francisco, Alice Tang uses artificial intelligence to help understand and diagnose complex diseases like Alzheimer’s. Tang is on her way to earning degrees from three UCs: her bachelor’s from UCLA, a Ph.D. from the UCSF/UC Berkeley joint bioengineering program, and an M.D./Ph.D. from UCSF’s Medical Scientist Training Program.

Credit: Susan Merrell/UCSF

Who’s leading the way for the next generation across AI, entrepreneurship, science and more? Fifty-eight members of the UC community, according to the 2026 Forbes “30 Under 30” list, which features alumni and faculty from seven campuses whose passions and promise are shaping the future.

The awards span 20 categories of 30 honorees each across the arts, technology and social impact. Candidates were evaluated by Forbes staff and a panel of independent, expert judges on a variety of factors, including funding, revenue, social impact, scale, inventiveness, and potential — along with being 29 or younger as of December 31, 2025 (read the full methodology).

Peruse the list of rising UC stars and their already impressive achievements below (descriptions lightly edited from Forbes).

Forbes 30 Under 30 by campus

2026 Forbes 30 Under 30 by campus/location (*Some honorees are included in multiple categories)
Location	Number of honorees
UC Berkeley	32
UC Davis	1
UC Irvine	2
UCLA	11
UC San Diego	9
UC San Francisco	2
UC Santa Barbara	3

Artificial intelligence

Sarah Wooders (UC Berkeley)

UC Berkeley Ph.D.s Charles Packer and Sarah Wooders have made waves with Letta, a startup filled with UC talent, from faculty to graduate students. Courtesy photo

With her Ph.D. in AI from UC Berkeley, Sarah Wooders has already done some amazing things: building MemGPT, an AI system designed to give a form of long-term memory to large language models that continually helps them improve; and founding Letta, a platform that lets developers build AI agents with better memory that get smarter with every interaction. The company was among the most highly anticipated launches in the AI space, thanks to its multitude of connections with UC Berkeley’s Sky Computing Lab, and now works with groups including Tufts University, Bain & Company, Nokia and Accenture.

Sam Yang (UC Berkeley)

UC Berkeley computer science alum Sam Yang, a cofounder of Nova Intelligence, is working to disrupt old, complicated software systems that integrate critical business functions. Historically, these systems are challenging to update, but Nova’s AI can analyze legacy code, rewrite it into something cleaner and easier to maintain, and document every change. The goal is to help businesses handle large software migrations faster and more cheaply.

Education

Kausi Raman (UC Davis)

Kausi Raman, with Chompshop co-founder Max Liechty, shows off some of the cardboard creations produced by their ChompSaw. Courtesy Chompshop

“Shark Tank” alum Kausi Raman is the co-founder of Chompshop, selling the $250 ChompSaw, a kid-safe power tool for cardboard. Some 76,000 ChompSaws have been produced for classrooms, camps, homes and other educational settings across the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia to encourage creativity and design thinking with any box lying around. Next up is a monthly subscription plan to guide kids through building specific objects, like a catapult. Revenue is projected to grow from $3.1 million in 2024 to $14 million in 2025.

Aryan Bhadouria and Adam Goldstein (UC Berkeley)

UC Berkeley computer science classmates Aryan Bhadouria and Adam Goldstein left school to launch TeachShare in January 2024. The AI platform allows educators to create lesson plans, grade in bulk, and modify materials for students at different levels. The goal is to offer teachers crunched for time and other resources the ability to effectively tier instruction to reach students who are performing at, above or below grade level. TeachShare has over 300,000 users and has raised $2.3 million.

Ryan Dehmoubed (UC Berkeley)

Ryan Dehmoubed co-created JuiceMind in 2021 to make computer science creative, collaborative and problem-solving-focused for K–12 students. Its curriculum uses quizzes and teamwork with AI grading to save teachers time. The California startup currently serves 500,000 students and 10,000 teachers. The White House has listed JuiceMind among recognized AI tools for education. Revenue is projected at $1.5 million for 2025.

Amareen Dhaliwal (UC San Diego)

A native of Punjab, India, Amareen Dhaliwal moved to the U.S. as a child, completed undergrad at UC San Diego, and began medical school at Boston University as a teenager. She is now a psychiatrist with Talkiatry and an entrepreneur in Florida. During postgrad studies, she started the Certified Clinical Research Professionals Society alongside her immigrant physician mother in 2016. The bootstrapped venture generated over $500,000 in 2025, serving 25,000 students in 82 countries who aspire to careers in clinical research.

Saeed Naeem (UC Berkeley)

Saeed Naeem co-founded Kollegio in 2023 to expand access to college counseling to more students, especially those from low-income backgrounds. The platform, free for students, has helped about 110,000 aspiring college applicants across all 50 states and 190 countries, providing personalized guidance, including essay feedback. They expect to serve 1 million students by 2027. The startup has raised $3.6 million.

Energy and green tech

Laurence Allen (UC Berkeley)

Terranova has developed a novel approach to lifting low-lying land out of flood danger. Co-founder Laurence Allen created robots that inject wood chips underground to physically raise land by several feet per year. The process can elevate homes or highways while generating carbon sequestration credits. The company has raised $7 million to date.

Chao (Charles) Hu (UC Irvine)

Reverse Energy Solutions, co-founded by Chao (Charles) Hu, addresses the growing problem of expired solar panels going to landfills. The company developed a mobile dismantling technology that lowers recycling costs while recovering about 80% of panel materials. Reverse Energy Solutions has raised $4 million and completed projects nationwide.

Selene Sari (UCLA)

Selene Sari founded Vox Aeris to improve air filtration using “acoustic agglomeration,” a method that clusters fine particles via certain sound waves for easier capture without reducing airflow — a cost and energy-efficient solution. A UCLA aerospace graduate with a master’s from Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art, her thesis formed the company’s foundation.

Finance

Yash Thukral and Nathan Yee (UC San Diego)

Yash Thukral, alongside his brother Kush (a UC Irvine alum), hold up a picture of their sister, Dr. Sanam Thukral, a UC Davis alumna whose tragic passing inspired the nonprofit Innovate GBM, which rang the NASDAQ closing bell in 2025. Credit: Nasdaq, Inc./Vanja Savic

Yash Thukral and Nathan Yee of White Lion Capital began investing while still at UC San Diego, launching Triton Funds, a $25 million student-run fund backed by San Diego investors and local university alumni. In 2019, they scaled up with White Lion Capital, which now oversees over $1 billion in committed capital across around 100 companies. Thukral is also making a difference for those with aggressive brain cancers, founding Innovate GBM, a nonprofit dedicated to reimagining the future of brain cancer research, after his sister and UC Davis alumna Dr. Sanam Thukral’s passing from Glioblastoma Multiforme in 2024.

Arkin Gupta (UC San Diego)

Arkin Gupta, formerly the head of Morgan Stanley’s central risk desk, joined Citadel this year to help build its macro equities strategy. He previously managed a $2 billion long-short equities portfolio and coauthored research on a machine-learning–enhanced Monte Carlo framework for more efficient probability modeling.

Theodore Pornprinya (UC Berkeley)

Theodore Pornprinya, cofounder and chief business officer of Plume, is advancing asset tokenization through a dedicated blockchain. Launched in 2024, Plume has raised over $30 million, onboarded 200+ real-world asset projects, and reached $152 million in total value locked.

Food and drink

Alex Michaelsen (UCLA)

Alex Michaelsen and his brother Steve founded Leisure Hydration in 2022, creating functional canned drinks with electrolytes, vitamins and nutrients. The two former D1 athletes were looking to combat both dehydration and stress. With its drinks available online and at Erewhon, Kroger and Whole Foods, the company has raised $10 million.

Brian Wong (UCLA)

Brian Wong is the co-founder of Feel Goods, a sugar-free wellness brand with Gen Z–focused marketing. After graduating from UCLA, Wong began his career as an engineer at the recipe search engine tool Yummly, helping build the company’s food-tech platform. The experience got Wong excited about the idea of creating something tangible. Feel Goods has raised nearly $5 million.

Games

Francisco Rodriguez (UC Santa Barbara)

Francisco Rodriguez leads the recruitment of developers making user-generated content at Meta Reality Labs’ Horizon Worlds, doubling recruits in two months. After immigrating from El Salvador at age 3 and being the first in his family to go to college, he worked at StreamElements, Twitter, Riot Games, HoYoverse and TikTok, marketing new game launches and improving creators’ revenue.

Yudi Sun (UC Berkeley)

At Duolingo, a popular language learning app, Yudi Sun leads growth design, implementing new social features and improvements in sound and haptics that helped boost daily active learners from 39 million to nearly 50 million and brought monthly users up to 128 million. Sun finished her B.A. at UC Berkeley in 2.5 years (she credits language learning for transforming her life) and was Lyft’s first design intern. Prior to Duolingo, she was at Cash App, where she led a full redesign of the mobile app, reaching 57 million monthly users.

Health care

Serina Chang (UC Berkeley professor)

Chang was honored with the ACM Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD) Dissertation Award for her thesis, “Computational Methods for Human Networks and High-Stakes Decisions.” Courtesy UC Berkeley Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences

An assistant professor at UC Berkeley, jointly appointed in Electric Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) and Computational Precision Health, Serina Chang researches the intersection of AI and human behavior with a focus on public health. Her AI systems address societal challenges like pandemics, polarization and supply chain disruptions. She has been recognized as a rising star in data science with a number of awards, and her work has been featured by over 650 news outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

James Hu (UC Irvine)

James Hu co-founded Illuminant Surgical to improve patient outcomes by providing doctors and surgeons with unprecedented support. His company’s software uses medical records and images to design graphics to be projected onto a patient’s skin as a guide for operating. The company has won grants from NIH and NSF, the latter to assist with spinal surgeries.

Henry Kasa and Zach Rosen (UC Berkeley)

Zach Rosen and Henry Kasa founded Brellium, an AI-powered clinical compliance platform, to help providers improve documentation accuracy compared to human reviewers. The company has raised $16.5 million. Rosen previously worked as an investment banker while Kasa holds a computer science degree.

Max Marchione (UC Berkeley)

Max Marchione co-founded Superpower in 2023 to provide an expansive health care app for consumers that offers biomarker testing at more than 100 labs for preventive and personalized health care. The company has raised over $30 million.

Sara Sakowitz (UCLA)

Sara Sakowitz is a general surgery resident physician at Massachusetts General Hospital whose research examines the collective impact of health equity and economics. She aims to uncover how socioeconomic disadvantage, hospital finances, and system-level structures shape access to and outcomes of care and build solutions that make health care more equitable.

Alexander Sanchez (UCLA)

Alexander Sanchez is CEO and founder of Nu Leaf Mental Health Group. He started the company after working as a charge nurse in a psychiatric urgent care center and noticed patients returned due to lack of quality outpatient services. Nu Leaf’s estimated 2025 revenue is more than $3 million.

Jon Wang (UC San Francisco)

Jon Wang co-founded Assort Health in 2023 to help doctors schedule appointments, saving time and reducing frustration. The company developed a text-to-voice AI chatbot to search physicians’ calendars and match their openings with appointment types. The company has raised more than $100 million.

Hollywood

Kelly Berger (UCLA)

As a motion picture literary agent at Creative Artists Agency, Kelly Berger represents directors, writers, actors and producers. She identifies emerging voices and guides transitions and negotiations. Over the past year, Berger led a slate of career-defining deals, including Rachel Kondo’s feature adaptation of “The Women” at Warner Bros. and Hannah Friedman’s “Yesteryear,” with Anne Hathaway, at Amazon.

Manufacturing and industry

Meher Akhil Birlangi and Eric Shnell (UC San Diego)

Meher Akhil Birlangi, center left, and Eric Shnell, center right, have already seen their FieldFab 3D printer have success, with the Indiana Army National Guard successfully printing parts while executing technical maneuvers in a helicopter, a first. Courtesy photo

Meher Akhil Birlangi and Eric Shnell cofounded defense startup Craitor, which harnesses the power of 3D printing in harsh environments. The company’s first product, the FieldFab, is a military-grade portable 3D printer made for tactical applications that can print parts in extreme temperatures or even on a moving helicopter, with possible applications not only for national security but disaster relief and space. Craitor has secured $3.3 million in government contracts, largely from Department of Defense grants.

Yasmeen Alfaraj (UC Berkeley)

Yasmeen Alfaraj founded NextSet Materials to develop an eco-friendly thermoset plastic for advanced materials manufacturing. As it stands, these typically non-recyclable plastics contribute more than 65 metric tons to landfill waste each year, so Alfaraj developed an additive that can be dropped into industrial resins to make them recyclable. NextSet Materials has $380,000 in funding.

Davide Asnaghi (UC Berkeley)

Designing printed circuit boards is challenging. Davide Asnaghi co-founded Diode Computers to make the process more seamless — providing users with rigorously tested designs using AI and automatically sending them to the factory. It has raised over $14.5 million.

Nick Callegari (UC Berkeley)

Nick Callegari is the founder of Verustruct, a public benefit corporation designing robotic construction technologies to create more affordable, sustainable and beautiful housing. Callegari created and patented a construction 3D printer to enable his builds. Verustruct has raised more than $2.4 million.

Gary Chen (UC Berkeley)

Gary Chen co-founded Raise Robotics, making robots for construction and equipping contractors with extra hands that can drill, lift, and move between floors. Their goal is to keep workers safe by leasing robots to the $13 trillion construction industry. Raise Robotics has raised $11.8 million.

Brontë Kolar (UC Berkeley)

Could running a science lab be as simple as writing an experiment? That's the idea behind Zeon Systems, co-founded by Brontë Kolar. The company uses natural language AI with intelligent robots to automate repetitive lab work so scientists can focus on discovery. Zeon Systems has raised $4.4 million.

Marketing

Bianca Fernandez (UC Santa Barbara)

Bianca Fernandez nabbed a $100,000 cash prize, a feature in Adweek, a trip to Cannes Lions, and the crown of Innovator of the Year as the winner of a new competition reality show with Jimmy Fallon. Courtesy Marketing Brew

Bianca Fernandez is head of brand engagement at Personal Day, a new acne-safe skincare brand founded by actress Lili Reinhart. Fernandez helped launch the company, leading brand development, creative direction, influencer strategy and its TikTok Shop. Since November 2024, the Personal Day has achieved triple-digit direct-to-consumer growth, seven-figure TikTok Shop sales, and a national retail rollout with Ulta Beauty. Fernandez also won the newest advertising competition show, NBC’s “On Brand with Jimmy Fallon.”

Retail and e-commerce

Arya Keshavarzian (UC San Diego)

Ever dreamed of pulling up to a party in a Lamborghini? Thanks to UC San Diego alum Arya Keshavarzian, you can do it with (less) of a price tag. Keshavarzian is the cofounder of LuxConcerige, a service that specializes in white-glove sourcing, delivery and deal structuring for exotic and high-end cars. Since their 2023 launch, revenue has grown 400% year-over-year, and they're now a top partner for Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche and Bentley, among others.

Ruth Sack (UCLA)

Ruth Sack modernized her family’s leather brand, Streets Ahead, by expanding to direct-to-consumer sales after 2020. The move established a retail presence at Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and Revolve, boosted by high-profile stylist and influencer exposure — including Beyoncé wearing a Streets Ahead belt during her Cowboy Carter tour — and is driving projected revenue of $3.2 million this year.

Matthew (Matteo) J. Sánchez (UCLA)

Matthew (Matteo) J. Sánchez founded Matteo Parfums, a fine fragrance brand sold in 15 countries. Bootstrapped until winning L’Oréal’s $200,000 Inclusive Beauty Fund in 2024, the brand is now expanding into retail. Sánchez is a two-time Art & Olfaction Awards nominee and two-time judge, and a member of The Fragrance Foundation.

Science

Yihang Chen (UCLA)

Yihang Chen develops nanoscale implants to monitor and treat chronic conditions. He’s created a probe that can track antibiotic molecules in the bloodstream as well as a biosensor for noninvasive glucose monitoring. He has five papers in journals like Nature Biomedical Engineering and holds one patent.

Katherine Forbes (UC Berkeley postdoctoral researcher)

At UC Berkeley, Katherine Forbes researches new chemical reactions that could potentially lead to pharmaceutical breakthroughs. Her paper in Science that demonstrated an efficient way to produce a type of molecule found in a variety of useful products has been cited 80 times.

Alice Tang (UC San Francisco, UCLA, UC Berkeley)

Alice Tang uses AI to analyze millions of health records for better diagnostics and personalized therapies, including for Alzheimer’s and autoimmune disorders. Her method has helped uncover novel insights into disease, including that dementia presents differently in men and women. The hope is to produce better diagnostics and personalized therapy across a wide spectrum of disorders. A physician, engineer and scientist, her publications in Nature Aging, Nature Medicine and Science Translational Medicine have been cited more than 800 times.

Social impact

Alex Edgar (UC Berkeley)

After a dynamic four years at UC Berkeley as part of the UC Student Association initiative UCWeVote, Alex Edgar cofounded Youth250 to “youthify” civic life. The organization runs the Youth250 Bureau, America’s first national paid youth advisory board, reaching 1.6 million people and 500 organizations. Through its Toolkit, Gen Z Scorecard, Champions Network and Open Letter to America, Youth250 has equipped 5,000 organizations to increase youth influence by July 4, 2026, while tracking institutional investment in Gen Z nationwide. Edgar has raised $1.1 million.

Mackenzie Feldman (UC Berkeley)

Mackenzie Feldman launched Herbicide-Free Cal while a Division 1 beach volleyball athlete at UC Berkeley, growing into Re:wild Your Campus. The nonprofit has raised $1.7 million, protected nearly 5,000 acres, and trained over 600 students and community members. It now partners with music festivals, parks and nature centers to reduce chemical usage and shift public space away from pesticides.

Kelly Pan (UC Berkeley)

Pan founded Impact Food during a UC Berkeley entrepreneurship course on alternative meat solutions, teaming with a biochemist and computer scientist to develop sushi-grade, plant-based tuna, the company’s first product. The company has since raised over $2 million to develop plant-based seafood products to help relieve the stress of overfished oceans, and partnered with Japan Airlines, InterContinental Hotel and Pokeworks.

Lily Vittayarukskull (UC Berkeley)

Lily Vittayarukskull created Waterlily, a platform preparing families for long-term care needs, after her aunt’s terminal cancer left her family bankrupt. Since launch, Waterlily has raised over $9 million, using 500 million data points to forecast individual care needs and costs. The platform is adopted by four of the five largest carriers, plus three Fortune 100, six Fortune 500 and seven Fortune 1,000 companies.

Social media

Hailey Sani (UC Santa Barbara)

Hailey Sani is a New York–based creator, writer, director and on-camera personality with 2.7M followers across platforms whose popular vlogs include those about her experience as a student at UC Santa Barbara, her alma mater. She’s also collaborated with Uniqlo and Dove and went viral with a Dior Beauty campaign, in addition to hosting press junket interviews with stars including Jennifer Lopez, Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt.

Transportation and aerospace

Aaron Guo (UC Berkeley)

Aaron Guo co-founded Hybron to produce aircraft engine compressor blades and aerospace components from composites. Their technology makes parts five times lighter than steel and three times stronger than titanium at one-fifth the cost. The company has secured over $100 million in pre-orders and raised $10 million.

Naweed Tahmas (UC Berkeley)

Naweed Tahmas founded Aeon in 2023 to develop AI-enabled tactical missile systems, including the modular Zeus missile for shoulder launch or unmanned platforms. Aeon has Defense Department contracts, including with Army Futures Command, and has raised $18.6 million from venture firms and Vanderbilt University.

David Zagaynov (UC Berkeley)

Co-founded by David Zagaynov in 2024, Poseidon Aerospace develops unmanned seaplanes for cargo and logistics. Their vehicle can haul 4,000 pounds over 1,200 miles, enabling cost-effective, resilient supply operations in areas where infrastructure is underdeveloped. The company has raised $8.5 million.

Venture capital

Jonathan Chang (UCLA)

Jonathan Chang is the co-founder of DayDream Ventures, a pre-seed fund that has backed companies including Sent and Watoga. He also works on the early-stage startup ambassador team at corporate credit card company Brex, and founded the tech and venture newsletter SF IRL, which has more than 10,000 subscribers. Chang gives back as well; he launched DayDream Fellows to help students often overlooked by the tech industry to break into venture capital.

Ryan Koh (UC Berkeley)

Ryan Koh, principal at Iconiq’s venture fund, led the $47M Series A for TinyFish, an enterprise platform for creating and deploying web-based AI agents. He also helped support OpenAI’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Statsig, a startup that helps companies test features and use real-time data.

Grace Ma (UC Berkeley)

Grace Ma, investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, has deployed over $400M in AI investments since 2022, on track for $500M. She has been key to Bessemer's AI investments into Anthropic, Wrapbook and Render. She serves on boards and as observer for multiple companies, including Crosschq, GetInsured, Reputation and Hyperscience, and publishes research on AI and growth investing.