Des Moines Roosevelt High School alum Feng Zhang is on ScienceNews’ “bright young minds” list, based on a survey of 30 Nobel Prize winners. When Zhang was a graduate student at Stanford University, he found ways to insert the gene of a light-sensitive protein found in algae into nerve cells. The result: Scientists could control brain cells in mice by using laser light. Zhang also has developed a way to “edit” genomes. Zhang holds appointments at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University and is an investigator at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. He was  born in China and and moved to Des Moines when he was 11.