We're excited to introduce MEIA's participating Startup Teams. MEIA's goal is to help create or expand Maryland-based clean energy businesses. Learn more about the teams below, and you can keep up with teams' progress on the MEIA Blog.
Onat Dogruer is the President and co-founder of Archer Power Solutions. Onat has been in the entrepreneurial space for over 15 years. He received his MBA from Fordham, and has been boating since he was five. He has been in the marine air conditioning service field and moved to the Chesapeake area seven years ago. He realized the need for a smarter, more efficient air conditioning option while anchored in the Bay in the still August heat.
Based in Maryland, 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. These advanced electronics also minimize the amount of power draw the unit needs. Archer Power Solutions’ design also focuses on ease of installation and user-friendly maintenance. The company has already commercially manufactured a drop-in, install-it-yourself marine air conditioner. Air conditioning without the dependence on noisy, carbon-heavy, oil-based, and fuel-consuming generators is possible.
Dr. Dung Minh Hoang aims to develop innovative, nature-based solutions for nutrient recycling, water processing, and waste treatment. Dr. Minh has over nine years of experience as a research scientist at the New York University – School of Medicine. His academic background includes an Engineering and a Master's degree in microelectronics from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Toulouse (INSA de Toulouse, France) and a Ph.D. in Bio-Medical Engineering.
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. The Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET) has already proven Aquatic Circle technology in aquaponics farming. While customer survey at the fish-keeping expo AquaShella shows customer potential for large fish tanks.
Carbon Plus is commercializing a new method to produce high-strength carbon fibers from inexpensive carbon black derived from methane pyrolysis. This process provides low-cost carbon fibers, significantly reducing energy consumption while producing green hydrogen. The new manufacturing processes will make carbon fibers more widely available and affordable for structural and composite material applications beyond their current market uses.
The team combines Maryland’s best, including team lead Canhui Wang, an Assistant Research Scientist at Johns Hopkins University; Chao Wang, an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University and Prof. Liangbing Hu from the University of Maryland. Adding to this robust collective, Prof. Satish Kumar and Dr. Kishor Gupta, both leading experts in carbon fiber research from Georgia Tech, bring their specialized knowledge to the project.
CUPtech (Catalytic Upcycling of Plastics Tech) has developed a novel process for the catalytic conversion of waste plastics via a common refining process known as hydrocracking to valuable chemical building blocks. The process has been tested to accept low-value mixed waste plastic feedstock like the blue bin recycling container. The process has been demonstrated at a laboratory scale to produce high-value aromatic products (e.g., benzene, toluene & xylene (BTX)). CUPTech has received DOE/ARPA-E funding for process development and FEL-1 modeling of a demonstration facility. The IP on catalyst formulation and hydrocracker reactor design has been filed with JHU.
CUPtech has been co-founded by multi-time business builder Steven Davey and Dr. Chao Wang, Associate Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and the Director of the Nano Energy Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
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. The system coordinates among DERs and provides comprehensive monitoring and management of energy consumption in a real-time manner. Our framework adapts to diverse objectives such as energy consumption optimization, carbon emission reduction, and maximizing energy self-sufficiency.
Dr. Sina Faridimehr is the Co-Founder and CEO of Enerytics. Sina has worked in the data science industry for over seven years. He was a member of the Judging Panel at the 2019 Syngenta Crop Challenge in Analytics and the primary researcher of Warner Media's team that received recognition in the 2018 INFORMS Edelman Analytics prize. Sina has published several papers in top academic journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Wayne State University and a master's and bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from Sharif University of Technology.
Team Leader Bob Gatte
Bob Gatte, recently retired CTO of WR Grace, is CEO of HighT-Tech Catalyst. 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.
JJ Innovative Materials aims to reduce carbon footprint in the construction industry by using carbon-negative materials. This venture 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.
JJ Innovative Materials uses these sustainable materials in a process that does not require heating or cooling or any additional toxic chemical additives for fire/mold resistance, reducing the environmental footprint of industrial production. Overall, JJ Innovative Materials claims to have made a carbon-negative construction material that sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for each product they make.
CEO Taein D. Lee founded JJ InnovativeMaterials, has a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Materials Science Engineering, and has published 10+ research journals on micro/nanoengineering techniques to control material properties.
Director of Compliance Chu Ding has a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Civil Engineering and is a licensed structural engineer and LEED Green Associate. He has worked for 3 years in structural engineering consulting and uses his experience to ensure regulatory compliance and provide a more applied perspective.
Director of Manufacturing Mark Wo has a B.S. from Johns Hopkins University in Materials Science Engineering; he boasts 5 years of experience in DIY contracting, 10+renovation projects, and real estate management. He works on day-to-day R&D operations and prepares the product for manufacturing.
The venture is currently operating in Baltimore and is finding a manufacturing site to develop its manufacturing technology.
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. The venture technology has shown flexibility in the product range it can support, including antenna, heater, pressure/flow, and Resistance Temperature Detector sensor electronics for high temperature and flexible current collectors for Li-ion batteries.
Dr. Shenqiang Ren co-founded Coppertech and is a Materials Science and Engineering Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. His expertise focuses on materials-by-design, self-assembly, and advanced manufacturing of multifunctional and stimuli-responsive materials for extreme environments. He is a postdoc fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and in 2015 he received the National Science Foundation – CAREER Award. 2014 Professor Ren earned the RSC Emerging Investigator – Journal of Material Chemistry.
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. Pirl has an R&D partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and has received seed funding from TEDCO.
Pirl was founded by Kobby Osei-Kusi, who has a Harvard Business School MBA and has managed the deployment of large power plants.
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. In addition, Vecino empowers local economies by passing those savings on to its small businesses and neighborhood partners.
Vecino's Gabriel Cepeda, a multi-time entrepreneur, an alumnus of Baltimore's Upsurge Equitech Accelerator and has been highlighted by New York Times and Fox Business.
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. Their innovative solutions harness the power of data to optimize grid operations, enhance reliability, and accelerate the transition to a clean energy future.
Brooke Smallwood is the founder and CEO of OASIS Energy Partners. She has over 20+ years of leadership positions in the energy field with large utilities and Fortune 500 companies, including Exelon, Alta Gas, Southern Companies, Honeywell, JCI, Lockheed Martin, and AECOM.
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. Thermoelastic cooling is a novel solid-state cooling technology based on the latent heat of the reversible martensitic phase transformation. MEST experimentations have shown that the refrigerant COP (coefficient of performance) is double that of the most widely used vapor compression systems.
Dr. Ichiro Takeuchi is the inventor and co-founder of MEST. He is a world leader in combinatorial materials science and has more than twenty-five years of experience in functional materials. Prof. Takeuchi received his PhD in Physics from the University of Maryland (UMD) and is a fellow of the American Physical Society.
Mrs. Sherry Xie manages operations and business development for MEST. Additionally, she has extensive experience in marketing and business development. Her first entrepreneurial experience began in 2009 in a wholesale business. Sherry received her MBA from Stern Business School of New York University.
Sustainabli’s mission is to decarbonize scientific research. Fume hoods consume as much energy as 4 American houses and are a significant driver of energy waste within research labs. 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. Sustainabli completed the MEIA Pre-Accelerator in 2021 and won the 2023 Pitch Dingman Competition and 2023 Do Good Challenge, the two premier pitch competitions at the University of Maryland.
Sustainabli was founded by Kevin Tu, an alumnus of the University of Maryland and a Churchill Scholar at the University of Cambridge; he is a published green chemistry researcher with 7 years of research experience at Johns Hopkins University and Duke University.
Salient Direct Ocean Capture (DOC), founded by WIlliam MacLeod 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. It also employs the ocean as its carbon dioxide contactor, concentrating it to a hundred times that of the atmosphere by volume. Carbon dioxide removed from seawater can be sequestered through any durable storage mechanism and the effluent seawater returns to the ocean to remove more CO2 from the atmosphere. These efficiencies position Salient Direct Ocean Capture to meet the projected need for 10-20 gigatons per year of global CDR capacity. Byproducts of the process will generate co-benefits and additional revenue streams to offset the cost of CDR and provide financial stability in nascent carbon removal markets.
William MacLeod is a first-time entrepreneur seeking to commercialize his graduate work at Johns Hopkins University. He has previously worked as an engineering consultant for US Government clients across a breadth of technical fields including energy, wireless communications, cybersecurity, industrial control systems, space systems, and human reliability analysis. William is also an Army veteran of five years and received his B.S. in Computer Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
Tastee Tape is a biodegradable adhesive film that can be colored, flavored, and branded. It is perfect for restaurants, delis, and fast-food chains that want to reduce their single-use waste and invite excitement into their menus. Originally an edible tape to hold together your messy meals, it received large traction with features on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, CNN, NBC, TIME’s Best Inventions of 2022, etc. Now, it is a food-safe, sustainable packaging alternative that can change the way we approach our meals.
Marie Eric graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a bachelor's degree in chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She obtained her master's degree in chemical and Biomolecular Engineering with a focus on product design. Her research focus was regenerative biomaterials, leading to published work. With her passion for biomaterials and messy meals, she helped create Tastee Tape. Soon, she hopes people all over can get a taste of Tastee Tape.
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. Terra Fusion approach has simplified the approach by developing a centrifugal supersonic magnetic mirror. This design will deliver a simple magnetic confinement configuration that can scale to a viable fusion power source at a fraction of the cost of competing technologies.
Terra Fusion was founded by Professor Carlos A. Romero Talamás, whose research has focused on plasma physics and engineering, including high temperature plasma confinement, fusion energy, diagnostics, low temperature dusty plasmas, and magnet technology.
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. Uplift’s technology stems from research at the University of Pennsylvania supported by an ARPA-E award. Dr. Daniel Nothaft, Uplift’s founder, is a geochemist and entrepreneur experienced in carbon mineralization, environmental tracers, and R&D management.
USPlasma Inc. (USP) is a spinoff project from the University of Maryland College Park and Princeton University. It was funded by distinguished University of Maryland Professor Liangbing Hu, Ji-Cheng Zhao, Professor and Chair of the University of Maryland Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Yiguang Ju, Robert Porter Patterson Professor of Princeton University.
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 (USP) reaching 8000 K at atmospheric pressure or higher with a record low-initiation voltage (~40 V) and operating power. USP overcomes several shortcomings of traditional plasma processes, including plasmas’ limited volume, instability, temperature nonuniformity, reactor design flexibility, scale-up issues, and cost competitiveness. The technology of USPlasma, Inc. enables scalable synthesis and manufacturing of bulk, ultrahigh-temperature materials, refractory metal alloys, amorphous high-melting-point oxides, sintering of materials containing volatile elements, and carbon nanotubes directly from carbon black without any catalysts, upcycling, and treatment of non-landfillable wastes such as military wastes, low-level radiative wastes, and asbestos into reduced-volume glassy slag materials.
Dr. Hamideh Soltani is the Director of USPlasma Inc. She is an accomplished and impactful leader with a broad educational background and work experience. She holds a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Delaware, an M.S. in Water Resources from Villanova University, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland. Dr. Soltani intends for USPlasma to develop and commercialize impactful technologies addressing humankind’s challenges by creating 21st-century advanced manufacturing for a better life. She will drive and advance the USPlasma based on the core values of LIFT, Leadership, Integrity, Focus, and Total Employees Development.
Maryland Energy Innovation Accelerator
5000 College Ave., Suite 31010, College Park MD 20740
Maryland Energy Innovation Accelerator is an
initiative of the Maryland Clean Energy Center
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