Fellows work across sixteen verticals, aligned with our broader mission to address climate change and other global challenges by reinventing our economy to be sustainable, resilient, and equitable. In each of these areas, Activate is assembling a coalition of funders, commercial partners, industry advisers, and technology experts to help guide you.
A full-scale revolution in what we make cannot happen without addressing how it's made. This requires dramatic improvements in real-time process control, optimization, preventative maintenance, production automation, supply chain management; as well as new levels of precision, real-time intervention, additive processes, and robotics.
The infrastructure, buildings, and core of our developed environments are essential to our way of life, and they are ready for rapid evolution in their design, materials, construction, efficiency, embedded carbon, and longevity.
Our warming requires that we drive major advancements in the management of carbon and other warming gases. These technologies include atmospheric removal, capture, utilization, storage, MRV (Measurement, Reporting, and Verification), pollution detection, modeling, identification, quantification, and mineralization of all radiative forcing chemistries.
Breakthroughs in material science, polymers, nanotubes, composites, compostables, circularity, recycling, and the reuse of waste are changing what we're made of. Chemical engineering is integrated into nearly all products and processes in every sector. Advanced processes, such as electrochemistry and electrolysis, process monitoring and controls, fuel cells, membranes, separations and conversions, toxicity removal, as well as the production of novel compounds and commodities, all contribute to the development of an advanced chemical society.
All hands on deck. These companies are directly addressing the impacts of a changing climate. This includes developing better and longer-lasting alternatives, efficient substitutes, sustainable upgrades, and adapting to a changing world.
The cutting edge of compute will include novel manufacturing, material design innovations in chips, quantum computing, cloud and edge computing, encryption, AI, semiconductors, advanced storage and recovery, and higher efficiency and throughput.
Our greatest moments of inflection in human society can be tied to a moment in harnessing a resource from the earth. Mining, geological resources, geothermal energy, carbon storage, mineralization, soils, drilling, tunneling, resource identification, geochemistry, and mining all play a part in the next phase of our history.
Activate advances the core electrical componentry of MEMS, radar, IoT, radio frequency, networking, chip and server cooling, computer hardware, wiring, sensors, human-technology interfaces, and more.
As the world economy becomes more electrified, we will need more power generation from wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower, as well as more efficient combustion. These resources would be nothing without also improving grid technologies, transmission, energy dispatch, interconnection, load management, monitoring, energy efficiency, charging stations, and more.
Our energy transition doesn't stop at creating more; we must also capture its potential. Storing energy as thermal energy, pressure, kinetic or gravitational potential, chemical, or electron batteries is necessary for a resilient future.
With a growing world, we must turn back to our very first industry. These experts are working on how to improve yields to keep up with growing populations, drive better resilience, synthesize proteins and meats, and reduce the harmful impacts of large-scale farming.
The future of biology's influence in industry can't be overstated. Advances in microbes, fermentation, enzymes, bio-derived chemicals, biomimicry, biofuels, bioremediation, and other hacking of natural and engineered biology will disrupt nearly all production industrial activities outside of life science and food.
The next generation of health includes advancements in genetics, genomics, metabolomics, therapeutics, medical devices, precision toxicology, and pharmaceuticals.
The sky was never the limit. Our next generation of satellites, rockets, planes, drones, UAVs, orbital/landing tech, engine dynamics, and remote sensing are being developed right here on the surface.
The technology moves us. Activate teams are working on systems of engineered solutions that connect our world across the land and sea through autonomy, electric motors, EV batteries, trains, boats, drones, thermechanicals, logistics, and supply chains.
Activate fellows are solving the challenges that affect the molecule that makes Earth so special. These are technologies designed to address the quality, quantity, or other uses of water and water chemistry.