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, solar and mechanical innovations, quantum, catalysis and electrolysis.
Responding to a nation-wide call for proposals, applications were submitted by November 30th. After review by CRI staff and Argonne scientists to narrow the field, semi-finalists were chosen.
The semifinalists will virtually pitch their startups’ technologies in a 30-minute interview to a review panel over five days February 28th through March 8th. From this group, finalists will be chosen to pitch at the finals competition on April 12th, 2024 to be held in-person at Argonne National Laboratory.
Cohort 8 Semi-Finalists
Tyler Adams, Color Changing Films for Smart Windows and Solar Energy Storage
Diana-Andra Borca-Tasciuc, Integrating Luminescent Solar Concentrators in Building Photovoltaics
Brittanie Dabney, Characterizing Food Waste Byproducts for Biomaterials Synthesis
Jordan DeVries, Ex-situ Carbon Mineralization with Magnesium Chloride
Berk Diler Kovos, SynthBits: Illuminating Designer Qubits for All
Onur Ergen, Accelerate SiC Production with Quantum Phonon Engineering
Angela Feldhaus, Levitating Platforms for Near Space Applications
Haining Gao, Hybrid Solid-Liquid Cathode to Boost Lithium Primary Battery Energy
Jinkyu Han, Non-woven Micro-Denier Carbon Felt and MCMB via Molten Salts
Natarianto Indrawan, Atmospheric Clean Ammonia Production
Karl Jantze, Thermoacoustic Energy Generation for U.S. Heavy Industry
Michael Kio, Development of Amphiphilic and Hydrogel-Based Fouling Release Coating
Bennett Lee, Breakthrough Grid-scale Storage Application
Austin McKee, High-Efficiency Electrolyzer for Nitrate-to-Ammonia Conversion
Quantum Crystal, Universal Quantum Computing Using Electron on Neon Qubits
Shalmalee Pandit, Cleaning Water with Baker’s Yeast
Nathan Petersen, Bearingless Motors for Sustainable High-Speed Machinery
Jhana Porter, Conversion of Biobased Overage Streams into High-value Polymer Bioproducts
Tim Ritter, High Entropy Solid Polymer Electrolyte for Lithium Ion Batteries
Raha Saremi, Agricultural waste Conversion into Sustainable and Green Textiles.
Charles Scoma III, Voltsensa – Deep Analytics to Transform the Electric Distribution Grid
Ying Sun, Phytomining for Extraction of Critical Metals from Soil and Mine Waste
Mokshin Suri, Modular Electrolyzers for Methane to Liquids Transformation
Scott Ryan Svadlenak, Validation of Economic Viability of a Novel Process to Upcycle PVC Waste
Rafael Vilá, Sodium-ion Active Materials for EV Applications
Tim Vosburgh, Commercializing Zinc-ion Batteries
Medhi Zadshir, A Coupled Solar-geothermal HVAC System with Passive Heat Exchanging
