Episode 35 of the Coworking Chronicles has us traveling to visit The Engine, Part 1..
The Engine is an incubator & accelerator supporting Tough Tech, the transformational science and engineering that solves the world’s most important challenges.
We caught up with Stwart Peña Feliz, Co-Founder & CEO at MacroCycle Technologies, Evan Haas, Co-Founder & CEO at Helix Carbon, and Chris Taylor, Ph.D. , Co-Founder at VioNano Innovations, Inc on this segment..
♻️ MacroCycle Technologies is creating the future of circular textiles, taking textile waste of any quality and upcycling it into yarn that’s identical to virgin material
⚡ Helix Carbon is tackling the steel industry’s carbon problem by building an electrochemical reformer that converts CO2-rich flue gases back into usable fuel gas, cutting emissions while reducing operating costs for steelmakers
🔬 VioNano Innovations, Inc is developing a new class of polymer materials for semiconductor manufacturing, reducing the variability that plagues leading-edge chip production
♻️ Stwart Peña Feliz, Co-Founder & CEO of MacroCycle Technologies shares..
Stwart’s team can take textile waste of any quality and upcycle it back into a drop-in solution for true circularity. Over 99% of all textile waste produced today ends up in landfills, oceans, or gets incinerated.
Recently, MacroCycle has produced recycled yarn that is identical to virgin material. The team is raising additional capital to scale production and start addressing this crisis at a larger volume.
Stwart is watching Mantel, another MIT startup one year ahead of them, and leans on their CEO Cameron as a mentor and friend.
⚡ Evan Haas, Co-Founder of Helix Carbon shares..
Helix Carbon is an electrochemistry startup focused on decarbonizing the steel industry. Evan’s team built an electrochemical reformer that takes CO2-rich flue gases off steelmaking furnaces and uses electricity to convert that CO2 back into carbon monoxide, the primary fuel gas used in those furnaces today.
Helix Carbon raised a Pre-Seed round last year and has already gone through two 10x scale-ups of their system. The next year is all about execution: one more 10x scale-up and first field deployments with customers.
Evan is watching Sora Fuel, Solvanic, and MacroCycle Technologies, their neighbors and friends at The Engine.
🔬 Chris Taylor, Ph.D., Co-Founder & CEO of VioNano Innovations, Inc shares..
There is immense variability in leading-edge semiconductor processes. Companies are struggling to control these processes, and VioNano wants to make materials that fix that.
If you have spare or scrap silicon wafers with test structures, they will take your trash and make magic out of it!
Chris is watching ChEmpower Corporation, also innovating in semi manufacturing with a slurriless CMP pad, that could mean huge cost reductions and better process control.