The finals for the first cohort of Argonne’s new technology incubator, Chain Reaction Innovations (CRI), will take place from 12:40 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Oct. 4, 2016, in Bldg. 241, Room D-172. Argonne employees are invited to watch all or part of the judging to learn about future opportunities to collaborate with the innovators or to participate in future cohorts.
Collaboration with CRI participants can help Argonne’s principal investigators access new funding opportunities to purchase research and development equipment and postdoc staff time, create joint intellectual property, build connections for future cooperative research and development agreement work and expand the impact of Argonne research on the marketplace. To learn more, watch this video.
At the finals, seven teams of innovators from across the country will give a 10-minute presentation followed by a 10-minute Q&A and 5 minutes of judges’ comments. Innovators will present the technical merits and market potential on their ideas for new technologies that further products related to energy efficiency and sustainability or advanced manufacturing. The CRI program will accept four to six innovators into its first program, which starts in January 2017.
The finalists were selected from more than 100 applicants. At the semi-finals in September, 20 teams competed before a packed house and judges from industry, the startup community and the investment community.
The schedule for the Oct. 4 pitches is as follows:
| 12:40-1 p.m. | Welcome Remarks Andreas Roelofs, Director, Chain Reaction Innovations Mark Johnson, Director, Advanced Manufacturing Office Peter Littlewood, Director, Argonne National Laboratory |
| Finalist Interviews — Session 1 | |
| 1:00 p.m. | Justin Whiteley and Tyler Huggins Biosynthesis of wastewater derived porous, carbon-based materials |
| 1:25 p.m. | Alexander Girau and Shiva Adireddy A scalable approach to functionalized nanomaterial production and 3D-nanostructuring |
| 1:50 p.m. | Chad Mason Low-temperature solid-state fuel cell |
| 2:15 p.m. | Bernard Johnson and Julie Blumreiter Development of stoichiometric, direct-injected, soot-free engine for heavy-duty transportation |
| 2:40-3:10 p.m. | Break/Judges’ Discussion |
| Finalist Interviews — Session 2 | |
| 3:10 p.m. | Rick Lasko Waste plastic remediation process |
| 3:35 p.m. | Ian Hamilton Radioisotope-generated plasma for energy devices |
| 4:00 p.m. | Felipe Gomez Del Campo Novel fuel injector for plasma-based control of combustion to enable cleaner engines |