Deepak Dugar MBA ’13, PhD ’13 founded Visolis, a biomanufacturing company developing carbon-negative, high-performance materials, reports John Cumbers for Forbes. “We use biology to make platform molecules. And then we use chemistry to turn them into a lot of different products. Because of this unique combination, we have an advantage both in terms of market as well as cost of technology development,” says Dugar.
On a recent episode of “Shark Tank,” Amrita Saigal '10 scored a $250,000 investment in her company Kudos, which is focused on making disposable diapers from sustainable and natural materials, reports Megan Sauer for CNBC. Saigal, who also founded a company called Saathi that makes sanitary napkins from banana peel fibers, notes she was inspired by seeing “just how much plastic we were putting into sanitary napkins and diapers.”
Kevin Hu SB ’13, SM ’15, PhD ’19 co-founded Metaplane, a startup aimed at providing users with data analytics-focused tools, reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “Metaplane monitors data using anomaly detection models trained primarily on historical metadata. The monitors try to account for seasonality, trends and feedback from customers, Hu says, to minimize alert fatigue, “writes Wiggers.
Alex Westner SM ’98 founded Xander, a company that uses augmented reality in personalized glasses to provide real-time closed captions for people with hearing loss, reports Dalvin Brown for The Wall Street Journal. “The glasses have an embedded display on the right side, where text appears almost as quickly as it’s picked up by a built-in microphone,” writes Brown. “There’s no wireless connection – all processing happens within the glasses.”
Asimov - an MIT spinout co-founded by Prof. Christopher Voigt, Alec Nielsen PhD ’16, Raja Srinivas PhD ’16, and Boston University Prof. Douglas Densmore - is a biotechnology company developing tools to design living systems, reports John Cumbers for Forbes. “Every cell is capable of computing. Perceiving environmental signals, information processing, turning genes on and off,” says Nielsen. “The ability to engineer this gift of evolution is, in my view, going to be the most meaningful and impactful technology that humans have ever developed.”
Vecna Technologies and Vecna Robotics co-founder Daniel Theobald ’95, MS ’97 speaks with Forbes reporter Heather Wishart-Smith about the future of robotics. “I believe that robotics can be one of the great tools for solving the world’s problems,” says Theobald. “The environment, equality, food scarcity, even happiness in allowing us to focus on being more human than today’s humans working like machines and doing jobs that really should not be done by humans.”
Sampriti Bhattacharyya PhD ’17, co-founder and CEO of electric hydrofoil startup Navier, speaks with AP reporter Matt O’Brien about the future of the company. “Our goal is to be the longest range-electric boat at cruising speed,” says Bhattacharyya.
Writing for Scientific American, John Fialka spotlights Form Energy, an MIT spinout designing an iron-air battery that “could help decarbonize the nation’s power sector more cheaply than lithium-ion storage systems.” Fialka explains that “unlike current lithium-ion batteries that require expensive materials mostly from other countries such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite, the proposed battery stores electricity using widely available iron metal.”
Forbes has named Commonwealth Fusion Systems one of the biggest tech innovations and breakthroughs of 2022, reports Bernard Marr. “Commonwealth Fusion Systems is now working with MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center on plans to build a factory that can mass-produce components for the first commercial fusion reactors,” writes Marr.
Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman spotlights how The Engine has “backed a number of promising climate-tech startups” and has “helped attract many other investors to climate tech.” Additionally “three-quarters of startups backed by The Engine had a founder or chief executive from an underrepresented minority group, and 44 percent had a woman in one of those roles,” Pressman notes. “From our point of view, it is unacceptable not to believe that people of very diverse backgrounds should be the next founders,” says Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner of The Engine.
Alumnus Jeremy Bilotti co-founded Rarify, a design furniture retail company, reports Lauren Mowery for Forbes. “Rarify uses the history of design to tell a story, educate our audience about the importance of notable designers, and push toward the future, bringing to light noteworthy manufacturers and designers that aren’t known or recognized to the degree that they deserve,” explains Rarify co-founder David Rosenwasser. Alumnus Jeremy Bilotti co-founded Rarify, a design furniture retail company, reports Lauren Mowery for Forbes. “Rarify uses the history of design to tell a story, educate our audience about the importance of notable designers, and push toward the future, bringing to light noteworthy manufacturers and designers that aren’t known or recognized to the degree that they deserve,” explains Rarify co-founder David Rosenwasser.
Boston Globe columnist Shirley Leung spotlights Elise Strobach PhD ’20 - co-founder and CEO of AeroShield Materials, a company developing super-insulating windows. Strobach is a recipient of funding from the MassVentures fund for deep-tech startups with a focus on underserved founders or those based in underserved regions. “We want to do cool things that have big impact,” said Strobach. “The minute I first visited Massachusetts, I just really felt that, ‘Wow, this is a place where that can happen.' "
MIT spinout Gaia A is developing a forest management building tool aimed at providing foresters with the resources to make data-driven decisions, reports Haje Jan Kamps and Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “The company is currently using lidar and computer vision tech to gather data but is ultimately building a data platform to tackle some of the big questions in forestry,” writes Kamps and Heater.
Quaise Energy, an MIT spinout, is developing a millimeter wave drill to “vaporize enough rock to create the world’s deepest holes and harvest geothermal energy at scale to satisfy human energy consumption without the need for fossil fuels,” reports Tim Newcomb for Popular Mechanics.
Kevin Kusch ’17 co-founded Notemeal, an nutrition app used by athletes at the professional and college level, reports Tim Casey for Forbes. “Notemeal’s first clients used the app to build meal plans for players and track their nutrition information. After Covid-19 hit, the NFL did not allow players to gather for meals, so Notemeal developed a feature where players could order directly through the app, see nutrition information such as carbohydrates, proteins and calories and pick up the food prepared at team kitchens to take home,” writes Casey.