At Friday’s showcase, the University of Tennessee Research Park’s Spark Accelerator kicked off a cohort heavy on nuclear, critical minerals and advanced manufacturing, plus SparkShop, a new engineering track for the region’s hardest problems. Nearly a hundred founders, investors, business leaders, and ecosystem builders fought second-week-of-classes traffic to pack a conference room at the Baker School
Starting a company around a new energy or manufacturing technology is difficult. Entrepreneurs often need years of research, specialized equipment and substantial investment before their ideas are ready for the marketplace. Innovation Crossroads helps aspiring hard-tech entrepreneurs overcome those barriers. Now welcoming its tenth cohort, this Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program node embeds technical founders at the Department of Energy’s
A new manufacturing process developed by Skuld with support from the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is moving from research to commercial production, offering U.S. manufacturers a faster, tooling-free approach to producing complex metal castings. In 2023, Sarah Jordan joined Innovation Crossroads to help mature Skuld’s process for
It was a pivotal few weeks for Megan O’Connor. The doctoral student and her academic advisor attended a conference session about a way to recover copper from wastewater… and the next week she abandoned three years of research to pursue the technology.
To those interested in high-end bicycles or sporting goods, carbon fiber may sound familiar, but it is relied on for myriad applications far beyond exercise and recreation. A composite of materials made from latticed carbon atoms, carbon fiber is known for its strength, rigidity and light weight. In fact, it is because of this unique
Already known for its toughness, sometimes steel must be made even tougher. When used for specific applications in extreme environments — such as in chemical processing, marine exposure or at high temperatures — even the highest-quality steel needs additional fortification to be resilient enough for the task at hand. To augment steel adequately for demanding
Six entrepreneurs have been selected for the next cohort of Innovation Crossroads, a Department of Energy Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program node (LEEP) based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The program provides energy-related startup founders from across the nation with access to ORNL’s researchers, facilities and technical expertise, as well as connect them with experts, mentors
The graduation brings LEEP’s total to 239 founders since the program launched roughly a decade ago. Those alumni have collectively raised more than $6 billion and created about 4,000 jobs. After two years of navigating the national labs, undergoing intense entrepreneurial programming, and building a functional business from the ground up, 23 founders are stepping
Glass bottles tossed in the trash are finding new life thanks to a collaboration between the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Vitriform3D, an advanced manufacturing company. Together, they found a way to turn old glass into new products using 3D printing. “There’s so much glass going into landfills in the U.S.,” said