Activate is the event of our year, every year—it’s when our fellows get to shine and show the power of their innovations. This year’s event made Cyclotron Road co-founder and managing director Sebastien Lounis more optimistic than ever about our program and its future.

By displacing petroleum-derived material feedstocks with engineered, bio-based alternatives, Visolis is focused on creating renewable products for the circular economy. With key pieces of the puzzle now set in place, Visolis’s founder, Deepak “Sultan of Scale” Dugar, is moving the firm from pilot scale to mass production.

Bleximo Corp., a startup that is bringing quantum computing from the research lab to industry, has announced the close of a $1.5 million seed round.

Antora Energy, Fervo Energy, Mosaic Materials and Visolis—four startups founded by Cyclotron Road fellows and alumni—received a total of $7.5 million in funding from a pair of Department of Energy offices as well as from the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (APRA-E) this month.

Founded by Cohort Two fellow Zachary Sun, Synvitrobio has announced an oversubscribed $2.6 million seed funding round as well as a new name—Tierra Biosciences—and the appointment of a chief scientific officer, Louis Metzger, who has a background in drug discovery at Novartis.

The first law of Techonomics: Value>Cost

“We are excited about the potential Nelumbo holds for heat exchangers and the broader HVAC market," says Jürgen Fischer, president of Danfoss Cooling Segment.

“I’ve been a big fan of what Cyclotron Road is doing,” said former DARPA director Arati Prabhakar. “One of the big strengths is that it recognizes that there’s not a single recipe to figure out how every new insight progresses. Helping these researchers become entrepreneurs and figure out what the path is for their particular advance…that is extremely powerful.”

Danielle Applestone understands the hurdles facing entrepreneurial scientists.

Introducing two new team members: Tom Boussie, managing director of technology, and Robert Ethier, investment director.

For its special section on innovators advancing world-changing ideas and technologies, the Times included Cyclotron Road alumna Kendra Kuhl as a climate change visionary.

We are thrilled to announce our next cohort of Cyclotron Road fellows. These 13 scientists and engineers will spend the next two years embedded at Berkeley Lab, advancing their technology innovations from promising concepts to first products.