Cohort 2022
BILEN AKUZUM
Project: Aepnus Technology—Electrifying critical mineral refinement
Bio: Bilen Akuzum is the co-founder and CTO of Aepnus Technology. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the UC Berkeley Water Center. Akuzum's interdisciplinary academic path exposed him to a core foundation in metallurgy which expanded into elements of mechanical engineering, carbon materials, electrochemistry, and rheology as he pursued his Ph.D. at Drexel University. Akuzum is passionate about applying recent breakthroughs in electrochemical research to century-old problems in order to help decarbonize the manufacturing of critical materials.
BEHTASH BEHIN-AEIN
Project: Ludwig Computing—Building a next-generation probabilistic computer
Bio: Behtash Behin-Aein received his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Purdue University. His spintronics research was one of the rare theoretical publications in Nature Nanotechnology. Later, at GlobalFoundries, Behin-Aein led the development of device and compact models for STT-MRAM chips from concept to manufacturing 40Mb arrays. The decade-long pursuit of his passion, probabilistic computing, has led him to co-found a startup to actualize a new computing platform.
LUKAS HACKL
Project: Aepnus Technology—Electrifying critical mineral refinement
Bio: Lukas Hackl is the co-founder and CEO of Aepnus Technology, a company focused on the carbon-neutral production of commodity chemicals. Aepnus' advanced electrolysis process evolved out of Hackl’s Ph.D. research on electrochemical water desalination that he carried out at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Prior to that work, he received a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from ETH Zurich. Hackl is deeply passionate about climate change mitigation coupled with entrepreneurship.
GJ IA O'
Project: Tyfast—Ultralong cycle life and ultrafast charging batteries to electrify high duty-cycle, mobile platforms
Bio: GJ la O’ is co-founder and chief executive officer of Tyfast. Before Tyfast, he spent a decade leading technology development and commercialization of grid-scale energy storage at Primus Power where he helped raise $100M in venture capital. At Tyfast, la O' leads product, market, and funding roadmaps. He has published over twenty articles and has been issued 23 patents. He is a material scientist and earned his bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
DANIELLE UCHIMURA PASCOLI
Project: VERDE Nanomaterials—Simple and scalable process for nanocellulose production from residues and waste
Bio: Danielle Pascoli completed her Ph.D. at the University of Washington (UW) where she built expertise in biomass conversion to biofuels and biomaterials with a focus on process development and sustainability. She earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemical engineering from the University of São Paulo in Brazil and a master’s degree from UW. VERDE Nanomaterials is a result of her doctoral research in which she developed a cost-effective process to manufacture nanocellulose using agricultural wastes.
DANIEL SUN
Project: Sunchem—Developing nanofilters for selective metal capture
Bio: Daniel T. Sun is a San Francisco Bay Area native and the founder of Sunchem. He received his B.S. in chemistry at Loyola Marymount University in 2013 and his Ph.D. in chemistry and chemical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in 2020. His objective is to revolutionize how critical metals are purified while also providing clean drinking water using Nano Filters.
MATTHEW ANDERSON
Project: Ọsọ Semiconductor—Ultra-low power and low-cost chips to supercharge the high-performance antennas of the future
Bio: Matthew G. Anderson is founder and CEO of Ọsọ Semiconductor, an innovative fabless semiconductor company selling ultralow-power, low-cost, performance microchips to supercharge the antennas of the future. Previously, he was an electrical engineering and computer science Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in low-power wireless microchip design. Anderson has more than six years of industry experience at Apple and other tech companies as well as a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and physics.
KATHERINE FRENCH
Project: BluumBio—Developing next-generation bioremediation technologies to degrade toxic chemicals in the environment
Bio: Katherine French is the founder and CEO of BluumBio. She is passionate about developing new solutions to clean up the environment and bringing together multiple disciplines, from ecology to synthetic biology, to achieve this goal. She completed her bachelor’s at Boston University, her master’s and Ph.D. at the University of Oxford, as well as two postdocs at UC Berkeley and the Joint Bioenergy Institute.
JAN KAISER
Project: Ludwig Computing—Building a next-generation probabilistic computer
Bio: Jan Kaiser is a co-founder of Ludwig Computing. He earned his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering as a Ross fellow in Supriyo Datta’s lab at Purdue University. His research focused on spintronic devices and probabilistic computing systems. He is passionate about novel physics-inspired computing approaches. Kaiser earned bachelor's and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany.
HAODONG LIU
Project: Tyfast—Ultralong cycle life and ultrafast charging batteries to electrify high duty-cycle, mobile platforms
Bio: Haodong Liu is co-founder and chief technology officer of Tyfast. Before Tyfast, he was a project scientist at UC San Diego, where he earned his Ph.D. in material science. He is an expert in a variety of the electrochemical systems and in the design, synthesis, processing, and characterization of advanced electrode materials for Li-ion batteries and novel electrolytes for Li-metal batteries. He has also built a pilot line for fabricating 2 Ah pouch type Li-ion batteries. Liu has published more than 80 papers and has 5 patents.
SARAH PLACELLA
Project: Root Applied Sciences—Automated airborne pathogen monitoring for agriculture
Bio: Sarah Placella founded Root Applied Sciences after realizing that farmers struggle to get decision-critical information for pathogen management. She applies techniques she learned as a scientist and researcher to provide actionable insights to growers. Placella worked at startups in biotech and agtech before starting Root. She has a bachelor's degree in earth and planetary sciences from Johns Hopkins University, a Ph.D. in soil microbial ecology from UC Berkeley, and postdoctoral experience at Michigan State and INRAE, a national research institute in France.