Demo Day 2018

Chain Reaction Innovations, the Entrepreneurship Program at Argonne National Laboratory, will be holding its first Demo Day from 5:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on September 12, 2018 at the Gleacher Center in Chicago.  Four teams from Chain Reaction Innovations Cohort 1 will be showcasing their technologies and emerging companies to potential investors and the energy community.  CRI is the Midwest’s first entrepreneurship program to embed innovators in a national laboratory.

Register for Demo Day 2018

Cohort 1 innovator companies include:

Tech Company Reimagining Food Production for a Better World

Solid State Electricity Generation

Better Combustion, Better Performance

Cleaner, More Powerful Engines for Heavy-Duty Applications

Chain Reaction Innovations is a two-year program for entrepreneurs focusing on energy and science technologies. Selected annually through an application call, the program enables innovators to work on their technology full-time, reduce R&D time, and de-risk technologies with the help of leading experts and equipment from a national laboratory. Each cohort works to build their innovations into market-ready businesses.  CRI is located at Argonne and supported by area mentors from the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago and the Purdue Foundry at Purdue University.

Demo Day 2018 also will feature companies from Innovation Crossroads, an early stage entrepreneurial fellowship program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, including:

  • Active Energy Systems – Harvesting low-temperature waste heat for electricity generation
  • Sky Nano – Electrochemical production of low-cost carbon nanotubes from carbon dioxide
  • TCPoly – High thermal conductivity 3D printing filaments for FDM 3D Printers

Chain Reaction Innovations and Innovation Crossroads are part of the Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Programs (LEEP) from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). EERE created the Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Programs to provide an institutional home for innovative postdoctoral researchers to build their research into products and train to be entrepreneurs. The two-year program is funded by EERE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO).

For more information or an invitation to CRI’s Demo Day 2018, please contact [email protected]

Latest News

See All
  • Semi-finalists Chosen for CRI's Cohort 8

    Twenty-eight individuals with a wide range of startup technologies were chosen to advance to the semi-finals and compete to join Chain Reaction Innovations’ (CRI) Cohort 8. A broad range of innovations are represented in this year’s applicants, including energy generation and distribution, bioremediation, anti-fouling, mineralization,… Read More

  • Chain Reaction Innovations wins a 2023 Chicago Innovation Award

    Chain Reaction Innovations has been recognized for solving unmet needs, creating jobs and generating new funding in the Chicago metro area. Chain Reaction Innovations, the entrepreneurship program at Argonne National Laboratory, has been recognized with a Chicago Innovation Award. (Image by Chicago Innovation.) Chain… Read More

  • Entrepreneurship program at Argonne opens applications for startups

    Chain Reaction Innovations seeks innovators to join Cohort 8 OCTOBER 26, 2023 Develop your clean energy or climate technology with the support of Argonne National Laboratory’s Chain Reaction Innovations program. Application deadline is 5 p.m. CST, Nov. 30.   Through Chain Reaction Innovations, early-stage… Read More

  • New startups Join Argonne’s Entrepreneurship Program

    Chain Reaction Innovations announces new cohort Clean energy startups embed at Argonne to develop innovative technologies that hold promise for helping mitigate climate change. Four startups joined Chain Reaction Innovations, the entrepreneurship program at Argonne, to develop clean-energy technologies over two years. Four new… Read More

  • Demo Day Showcased Innovators at Four National Labs

    Argonne hosted Demo Day in downtown Chicago, an event celebrating innovation at four laboratory-embedded entrepreneurship programs. Resilience of innovators recognized at gathering of national lab-based technology incubators. Getting an invention or new breakthrough from the laboratory into the broader world requires more than just a… Read More