Program | Innovation Crossroads

Accelerating Your Innovation at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Clean-tech hardware-based startups are challenging. They require significant risk, capital, and time. Innovation Crossroads is a two-year fellowship program, based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, that provides innovators with the needed resources to develop and de-risk their technology. Throughout the two-year program, aspiring energy and advanced manufacturing entrepreneurs are linked with experts, mentors, and networks in technology related fields to take their world-changing ideas from R&D to marketplace.

How We Support Our Fellows

Empowering Leaders

A two-year fellowship, including personal living stipend, plus a health insurance stipend and travel allowance
$200,000 of R&D funding to scale and de-risk your technology
R&D assistance from ORNL staff scientists and engineers
Laboratory and office space

Igniting Innovation

$1.4 billion annual budget
4,750 employees
1,100 staff scientists and engineers
3,200 researcher guests annually
9 national scientific user facilities
20 research centers and joint institutes

Launching Businesses

Startup curriculum: business model development, financial literacy, investor readiness, and preparing your pitch
Accounting and legal advice
Advisory network of business mentors
Connections to industry experts, commercial partners, and investors
A community of peer support

Interested?

Are you an entrepreneur interested in being a part of our program? Through an annual call each fall, applications are accepted and following a rigorous review and interview process, up to seven innovators are select. Selected innovators will receive a fellowship that includes a personal living stipend, health insurance, and travel allowance, plus substantial funding to use on collaborative research and development at ORNL.

Program Sponsors

U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing Office

Mission: Catalyze research, development and adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies and practices to drive U.S. economic competitiveness and energy production.

Tennessee Valley Authority

Mission: Support investments in technologies to achieve a shared integrated grid: a power system that is highly flexible. Resilient, and connected and that optimizes energy production, delivery, and use by integrating utility and customer owned resources.