Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has invited seven new technology innovators to join the third cohort of Innovation Crossroads. Launched in May 2017 with its first cohort, Innovation Crossroads is uniquely designed to support science-based startups by helping them transition their technology from the lab into the free market.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) signed up as a sponsor for the third cohort. This partnership encouraged a high number of innovators focused on energy-related and grid reliability topics.
For their two-year fellowship, the seven chosen engineers and scientists will be able to advance their technologies, work alongside world-class experts, leverage innovative capabilities at ORNL, develop their business strategies and foster valuable partnerships with a network of mentoring organizations. Additionally, the fellowship provides a cost-of-living stipend and up to $200,000 to use on collaborative research and development at ORNL.
The Innovation Crossroads fellows and their projects titles include:
- Jesse Thornburg, “Learning-Based Monitoring and Control for Optimizing Commercial Refrigeration Operations”
- Alex Lewis, “Microbial Electrolysis for Production of Renewable Hydrogen from Organic Waste”
- Leila Safavi-Tehrani, “Advanced Production of High Purity Radioisotopes for Nuclear Medicine”
- Hicham Ghossein, “Innovative Processing of Advanced Fiber Nonwoven Mats Through a Hydroentanglement System”
- Trevor McQueen, “Next-Generation Sample Preparation Device for Cryo-TEM Studies”
- William Fitzhugh, “Industrial Scale Production of Semiconducting Carbon-Nanotubes via Resonant-Dielectrophoresis”
- Jesse Claypoole, “Advanced Multi-Spectral Light Field Imaging Sensors”
Both ORNL and TVA are founding members of the Innov865 Alliance. To learn more about the third cohort fellows, watch this video.