When Evan Stacy was knee-deep in his Ph.D. program at the University of Southern Mississippi, a side project evolved into tackling one of the biggest bottlenecks in carbon fiber production. Today, he’s commercializing that technology through the Innovation Crossroads program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Innovating in Square One When carbon fiber is produced, step one of the process is
Shift Thermal, part of the 2017 Innovation Crossroads cohort at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has partnered with the city of Oak Ridge to launch their thermal energy storage system, FLEX, at the Oak Ridge Civic Center.
Launch Tennessee today announced the 32 companies selected for its FY26 SBIR/STTR Matching Fund, marking a historic milestone as the program surpasses $1 billion in total economic impact – measured through follow-on capital raised, additional grants leveraged, and wages generated across the State of Tennessee. The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology
The founder Justin Nussbaum said Ascend was selected to work on a top-secret project with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to manufacture small, complex parts. What if you could print thousands of complex parts in a single day, using materials no one else can? That’s the challenge Justin Nussbaum set out to solve. Several major issues plague
The company was one of the participants in the 2021 cohort of the “Innovation Crossroads” program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Additive Assurance and Addiguru, a member of the 2021 cohort of the “Innovation Crossroads” program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, were ranked as the top companies in ASTRO America’s inaugural Actionable In-Situ Awareness Challenge. The tech challenge saw five companies
Ateios Systems and Kodak are announcing they have demonstrated the fastest solvent-free production process for high-energy electrodes ever reported. Powered by the RaiCure™ platform, the system reaches an unprecedented coating speed of 80 meters per minute, nearly three times faster than the industry-standard 30 m/min with fluorine-polymer-based electrodes. The system achieves those speeds while enabling
In the first-ever full-day 865 Fest, formerly known as Knoxville’s Startup Day, about 300 people gathered inside Bridgewater Place in West Knoxville. The day-long programming included conversations about the collaborative efforts on the Covenant Health Park stadium downtown, keynotes from Mark Pancratz and Jordan Harper, and breakout sessions on valuation, relational equity, and more. But
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the opening of application portals for the Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP) 2026 Cohort, a two-year, funded fellowship that supports the next generation of energy entrepreneurs. Selected fellows will work to advance technologies that make energy more affordable, bolster national security, and give American manufacturers a competitive edge in
While she didn’t grow up on a farm, Bianca Bailey always had a fascination with agriculture and engineering. The summer before sixth grade, the Texas native attended a research apprenticeship program at Kentucky State University where she took soil samples from a tomato farm and examined pesticide infiltration in groundwater. Fast forward to when she