Laurence Allen

Terranova has a new trick to lift low-lying land out of flood danger. Laurence Allen has devised robots that inject wood chips underground to physically lift up land by several feet per year. It helps raise homes or highways, and generates carbon sequestration credits in the process. Allen, who graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from UC Berkeley but dropped out of his Stanford master's degree to launch the company, has so far raised $7 million for the enterprise.