Description:

"Cyclotron Road and Chain Reaction Innovations – offer fellowships for hard-tech innovators interested in driving their concepts from lab to market"

Abstract:
The science-to-product gap for hard technology is real. Our current innovation centers —within academia, corporate R&D, and startups—are not consistently translating promising science into commercially viable products with the potential for scalable impact. Academic research institutions are optimized for scientific discovery. Industrial R&D labs reach well beyond discovery, but corporate innovations are highly constrained by near-term shareholder priorities and market dynamics. Startups are highly productive innovation engines, but the costly risks of hard technology development make it nearly impossible to raise startup capital in competition with digital technologies and market-ready consumer devices.

Given these issues, Cyclotron Road, a program developed at Berkeley Lab, and Chain Reaction Innovations, a program developed at Argonne National Lab, have created a new home for entrepreneurial scientists and engineers to bridge the science-to-product gap in hard energy technologies. Our goal is to define a new innovation pathway—one bringing together the resources and partners needed to support our best and most-driven innovators, allowing them to develop cutting-edge science into commercial products with sustained impact on our energy future. Come learn if these programs could be a compelling path for your career.

Speaker Bio #1:
Matt Price is a Managing Director of Cyclotron Road and leads the program’s focus on commercial and financial support. Prior to Cyclotron Road, Matt was a Vice President at Enlighted Inc., the leading wireless sensor network and lighting controls manufacturer for commercial and industrial buildings. Prior to joining Enlighted in 2011, Matt was a Principal at Nth Power, where he led investments in a broad range of energy and cleantech areas including materials and nanotechnology, fuel cells, biofuels, advanced lighting, and smart grid technologies. Matt is a Kauffman Fellow and received his M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley. While at Haas, he co-founded the Berkeley Energy Resource Collaborative (BERC). He holds a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University

Speaker Bio #2:

John Carlisle, Director – Chain Reaction Innovations, Argonne National Laboratory

John is a physicist and entrepreneur with a strong passion for translating fundamental discoveries into disruptive products. John re-joined Argonne in 2016 after working for more than 15 years as Co-Founder and CTO of Advanced Diamond Technologies, which he spun out of Argonne in late 2003. ADT today is profitable, growing aggressively, and the world leader in thin, smooth diamond coatings for industrial, semiconductor, nanomanufacturing, and water treatment applications. John holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has more than 240 publications in peer-reviewed journals and given numerous invited talks at international conferences. He has performed seminal work in several fields in condensed-matter physics and materials science, including surface physics, soft-X-ray synchrotron radiation, and synthetic carbon materials.