Kyle Landry, extremophile researcher and skincare creator

Imagine the following: You're working away in your science lab and the phone rings. It happens to be Dr. David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School, the pre-eminent star among longevity researchers. But you've never heard of the guy. "Would you like to come work with me?" asks Dr. Sinclair.

Who we're talking about: Dr. Kyle Landry, and the above story actually happened to him. Landry is a food scientist by training and a lecturer at Boston University.

Landry’s research focuses on extremophiles, microorganisms that survive in the most unfriendly places, such as the insides of hot springs and the bottom of the ocean. This caught the attention of Dr. David Sinclair, who saw a possible connection between extremophiles and longevity.

The result of this collaboration: Sinclair and Landry worked with NASA to create a bacterium that survived for 18 months on the outside of the International Space Station. The idea was that a bacterium that could adapt to the extreme solar radiation on the outside of the ISS could help us protect against more ordinary solar radiation on Earth.

And the news is: Landry and Sinclair commercialized their discovery, and started a company around it, called Delavie Sciences. Last October, they released their first product, a skincare serum that promises skin restoration and rejuvenation. Read more about it here.