25-year Old Develops Molecular Imaging Equipment

25-year old Brian Ruby got the idea of developing a system to photograph the smallest particles on earth when he was a 15-year-old intern at IBM (IBM) working in the company's nanotechnology division. While visiting a pharmaceutical company that works on HIV vaccines, he saw that there was no way to take pictures of the vaccine.

So Brian went ahead and founded Carbon Nanoprobes in 2003 in his Columbia University dorm room to develop a technology for molecular imaging. His company now has 9 employees and is expecting a $1 million profit in the next fiscal.