One of nine children, Dr. Anthony (Tony) Brennan grew up in a small town in upstate New York. He invented a way to inhibit bacterial growth through plastic sheets that are comprised of millions of microscopic features arranged in a diamond pattern - much like shark skin. A voracious reader, Tony wanted to be an astronaut growing up, but had poor eyesight. His inspiration for Sharklet Technologies was the US Navy, which in 1999 asked him to figure out a way to keep barnacles from growing on its ships.