Welcome

  Team Leader Tom Pretch and Sarah Daken 

 Floraponics is a woman-owned, organic, sustainable cut flower farm revolutionizing floriculture via aquaponics, providing high-quality, long-lasting blooms to florists, floral designers, and the consumer. 

Team Leader Taein Lee

 JJ Innovative Materials has developed prototypes for drywall and wall tiles that are 95% made of sustainable ingredients or recycled by-products of existing industries like industrial hemp, pumice powder, hydrated lime, and fly ash. 

Team Leader Randi Williams

 Metallic Luxury is a sustainable community development company - created to initiate the chain of generational wealth with foreclosure prevention education through homeownership.  

Team Leader Jeffrey Neal 

 Loop Closing lowers the cost and environmental and socioeconomic impact of food waste disposal through a regenerative on-site composting solution that replaces dumpsters and hauling. 

Team Leader Ratnesh Tiwari 

 NextGlass is developing a novel process to fabricate low-cost vacuum insulated glass (VIG) windows that are five times more insulating than regular dual pane windows and are as insulating as walls. 

Team Leader Neil Sorkin 

  Redhelm Labs is revolutionizing the drone industry with its innovative wireless long-range in-flight recharging technology powered by laser. 

Team Leader Nic Abel 

 Finev helps small and medium sized businesses transition to electric vehicles. Our platform provides EV loans that are more affordable than traditional lenders, enables SMB owners to find the right EVs and chargers for their needs, and surfaces incentives to reduce their cost of going electric.   

  Team Leader Betty Watson

Venki Energy is developing technical solutions to residential solar’s biggest barriers, with the goal of connecting all households to solar energy and its benefits. Venki Energy is first tackling the top two reasons that customers who want solar don’t get it- the high upfront costs and long length of financing options.

Team Leader Gabriel Cepeda

Vecino is a climate-friendly hyperlocal supply chain system leveraging small businesses' collective free space and nearby neighbors' delivery capacity. This technology will help shipping carriers eliminate door-to-door services by vehicle for a net-zero carbon emission final mile. 

Team Leader Brooke Smallwood

OASIS Energy Partners is a venture revolutionizing energy data technology, providing a comprehensive suite of data automation software solutions to empower grid resilience and decarbonization efforts.  

Team Leader Sina  Faridimehr

Enerytics develops a Decentralized Energy Management System by leveraging Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and blockchain to address the complex challenges of large-scale demand flexibility scheduling in commercial and industrial buildings.

Team Leader Ichiro Takeuchi  

MEST is developing applications of thermoelastic cooling for environmentally friendly and cost-effective refrigeration. Thermoelastic cooling is a novel solid-state cooling technology based on the latent heat of the reversible martensitic phase transformation.

Team Leader Shen Ren 

 NewCopper has developed liquid printable copper ink for flexible hybrid electronic technologies. The directed printing of copper-based conductors opens the market for manufacturing high-performance and low-cost, flexible hybrid electronics. 

Team Leader Hamideh Soltani

 USPlasma is electrifying manufacturing leveraging renewable energy sources and 4th state of matter, plasma. Its unique, innovative plasma includes tip-enhanced carbon electrodes that provide a uniform, stable, ultrahigh-temperature plasma.

Team Leader Menglin Jin

Springgem integrates Internet-of-Things, smart sensor, remote sensing, machine learning and traditional weather physical model to provide solutions for smart city and smart road needs.     Their patented IcyRoad technology is equipped to monitor and predict road ice formation across US and Canada. 

Team Leader Patrick Ho

Forager Station has a patent pending lithium refining technology with higher extraction efficiency, significant water savings, and applicability to more customer types than other technologies on the market. 

Team Leader Lamar Mair

   SpinQi is a spin-out of Weinberg Medical Physics, which is working with two-dimensional materials (e.g., MXene) to build capacitors for energy storage needs of HVDC transmission lines and offshore wind facilities, with applications to electric vehicles and directed energy. 

Team Leader Onat Dogruer

Archer Power Solutions has designed and developed an innovative battery-operated air conditioner system for "off-grid" use that can be used with any DC power, including solar. The smart system utilizes proprietary electronics that control the system by collecting data from sensors and constantly calculating and calibrating the compressor's performance and other unique electronic components based on environmental needs.

Team Leader Dr. Dung Minh Hoang 

Aquatic Circle is an advanced water filtration system that provides water clarity without chemicals. Aquatic Circle has designed a nature-based water filter with limited maintenance. The product has a modular design with a patented coupling method between modules facilitating the swapping of dirty filter modules for clean ones while keeping the biological filter chamber intact.  

Team Leader Professor Ning Zeng

Ning Zeng is a professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at UMD and the founder/director of the Carbon Lockdown Project (CLP). He is the progenitor and world’s leading expert in a carbon sequestration technique called Wood Harvesting and Storage (WHS). It’s a hybrid natural/engineering technique, combining the best of human ingenuity with natural efficiency by burying woody biomass for long term sequestration.

Team Leader Xingpeng Zhao 

Cooling-X has developed the world’s first paint made from glass. This paint exhibits excellent solar reflection capabilities and provides radiative cooling to surfaces. The paint can be brushed and spray painted onto any surface, comes in various colors (not just white) and will become an important material in the fight against global warming.

Team Leader Koby Ose-Kusi

 Pirl has developed next-generation electric vehicle (EV) charging stations to accelerate the transition to electrified transport. Using the latest Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology, they deploy stations that charge rapidly, have a lower environmental footprint, and delight owners with an engaging user experience.

Team Leader Keith Gregorczyk

Ionic Devices is commercializing a novel methodology to produce lithium-ion batteries by leveraging semi-conductor manufacturing methods. These batteries have energy and power metrics that are orders of magnitude higher than conventional solid-state systems and are comparable to current market standards for liquid systems. 

Team Leader Kevin Tu

 Sustainabli has built a fume hood management platform, Sashimi, to help research organizations reduce mechanical energy use by up to a third and meet energy reporting benchmarks.

Team Leader Carlos Romero Talamas

Terra Fusion is a spinoff project from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and the University of Maryland College Park. The technology will generate a competitive energy source through plasma confinement at thermonuclear conditions to gain net energy from fusion energy. 

Team Leader Daniel Nothaft

Uplift Geosystems has developed a process to store CO2 and co-produce value add metals for clean technology supply chains. The venture has adapted methods proven to work in metallurgical and water treatment industries to store CO2 as solid magnesium carbonate, which can be used as a construction material. 

Team Leader WIlliam MacLeod 

SDOC is developing electrochemical technology for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from seawater.  Their approach is designed for scalability and cost. The electrochemical approach uses only electricity and seawater as inputs, avoiding supply chain constraints on plant operations. 

 Team Leader Professor Bing Hu

WH Battery is a battery technology company that will commercialize specialized electrolytes and a cellulose-based ion conductor. These drop-in technologies are suitable for high-power extreme temperature uses as well as for long duration grid storage applications.

Team Leader Eric Wachsman

Alchemity transforms chemicals into value-added products via ion-conducting ceramics and develops solid oxide fuel cells for producing power.

Team Leader Tim Shaw

BrightWave has developed and patented an innovative microalgae photobioreactor (PBR) that will serve as the cornerstone of industrial scale cultivation and decarbonization projects.  These smart, automated PBRs are internally illuminated and self-cleaning. 

 Team Leader Professor Deepa Madan

FlexiCharge is a novel technology that generates power by utilizing the temperature difference between the human body and ambient air called a thermoelectric generator (TEG). TEGs are integrated with a step-up voltage circuit that will charge a capacitor or battery, enabling “off-grid” power production for wearable devices 

Team Leader Professor Dave Tilley

Living Canopies is the Cool Green Shelter for Bus Stops, which protects waiting riders, manages stormwater, captures carbon, reduces air temperatures, provides free solar power for charging personal devices and collects environmental data.

 Team Leader Bob Gatte

HighT-Tech's patented method of manufacturing and tuning of high entropy catalyst materials will create high performance, perfectly mixed and stable multi-element catalysts.  

  Team Leader Frank Yang  

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Bethesda, MD, Liatris Inc. is a start-up company based in Bethesda, MD, USA developing advanced materials for thermal insulation which are easy to install, efficient, non-flammable and non-toxic. 

Team Leader Joe James

ATP-MD, LLC uses patented Combined Remediation Biomass and Bio-Product Production (CRBBP) Process, by which one plants and then multi-tasks special bio-crops to do good things for the health and well being of people, the planet and communities, less expensively.  

 Team Leader Sergio Baron

Dynami has created the first industrial scale technology to produce microstructured lithium battery electrodes. The Honeycomb Electrode(tm) has  secondary pore networks which create up to 80% faster charging/higher power, and potentially longer cycle life. 

 Team Leader Professor Chao Wang

 Chao Wang is Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Wang's direct air capture of CO2 approach is based on electrochemical systems designed to operate under ambient  conditions and is fully compatible with renewable electricity. 

 Team Leader Pranay Kohli

ACTIVEcharge offers an innovative approach to monitoring wind turbine blade health. This technology converts vibrational and rotational energy into electrical energy so that the sensors and data transmitters mounted hundreds of feet inside the blade do not need batteries or any additional electrical equipment to power the sensors. 

Team Leader Professor Meilin Yu

The Blue Green Energy Solution's Hybrid Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (HVAWT) is a hybrid of two classic vertical axis wind turbine designs – Darrieus H-Rotor plus Modified Savonius.   The turbine outperforms traditional VAWTs by providing lower cut-in speed, higher power co-efficient, less noise, and longer system life due to its more rigid structural design.   

Team Leader Bob Gatte

 HighT-Tech's patented method of manufacturing and tuning of high entropy catalyst materials will create high performance, perfectly mixed and stable multi-element catalysts.  This technology enables energy-efficient, clean and low-cost catalyst manufacturing; enables discovery of new materials and performance optimization; enables multiple catalyst functions within one material; and enables alloying of low-cost elements to replace noble metals.

 Team Leader Josh Cable

 InventWood is an innovator of advanced wood materials that offer better performance, lower costs, and greater environmental sustainability over commonly-used alternatives. One material, MettleWood, is up to 2x stronger and 5x lighter than high strength steel, presenting numerous commercialization opportunities in the construction, vehicle, and aerospace industries.  

Team Leader Ryan Powell

Manta Biofuel is commercializing a technology and process for producing algae-based biofuels that was developed at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES). These algal biofuels are produced using a low-cost high-throughput magnetic harvester with proprietary nanoparticles, as well as a low-cost hydrothermal liquefaction reactor. 

 Team Leader Adam Landsman

PulseIQ!, is a unique and innovative energy management and information service company that delivers significant energy efficiency and cost savings. Utilizing the power of big data and analytics from their proprietary networked thermostats combined with a state-of-the-art suite of HVAC sensors, controls, automation and optimization.