Give it up for Yahoo! Labs Research Scientist, Judd Antin, recognized as one of this year’s MIT Technology Review top young innovators under 35! This is a tremendous honor celebrating the industry’s leading young technologists and scientists whose inventions and research in medicine, computing, communications, electronics, nanotechnology, and more – are changing the world.

Judd’s research in the area of incentives and motivations for online collaboration has landed him on this distinguished list, which includes some A-list influencers, including Yahoo!’s Jerry Yang and David Pennock, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sergey Brin.

Core to Judd’s research is his focus on using creative techniques to measure and analyze motivation and participation in depth. For example, Judd has critiqued popular notions about what motivates online participation – specifically around “gamification,” or virtual goods (think points, levels, and badges) that many social media systems use to incentivize user participation. Despite common belief in their effectiveness, Judd argues that game dynamics can “crowd out” intrinsic motivations, discourage collaborative behavior, stifle creativity, and ultimately do more harm than good in some online contexts.

Judd also challenged the notion that gamification is an equal opportunity motivator. By looking for statistical connections between game-based motivation and dispositional beliefs about trust and privacy, he found evidence that the social risks and rewards inherent in game dynamics make them less motivating for less trusting people.

You should also check out Technology Review’s September issue to read Judd’s column on the phenomena of gamification. Judd dives deep into the psychology of game mechanics to identify what truly motivates people to engage in online behavior, clarifying much of what is commonly misunderstood about the growth of online and mobile games.

The annual EmTech@MIT Conference, to be held in October at MIT, will honor the TR35 winners with a dedicated awards ceremony. Congratulations again to Judd for a very well deserved honor!