Last month, Kendra Kuhl was highlighted as one of the MIT Technology Review’s “35 Innovators Under 35” for her work at Opus 12, a startup in the AMO-sponsored Cyclotron Road program. The award recognizes “disruptors and dreamers” who are “inquisitive and persistent, inspired and inspiring” and “are poised to be leaders in their fields.”

Kendra and her team have been developing a small reactor which converts carbon dioxide, a common byproduct of power plants, into valuable chemicals and fuels. This new technology can also operate at low temperature and pressure, which reduces the amount of energy required for the reaction to occur. Kendra’s team at Opus 12 seeks to use catalytic nanoparticles to rearrange the atoms in carbon dioxide to produce different outputs that are both more environmentally friendly and can serve as feedstocks for other reactions.

Through the Cyclotron Road program, Kendra’s startup has had unprecedented access to the tools and resources at Berkeley Lab including the Molecular Foundry, which is funded by the Department of Energy. Kendra is a shining example of how this program takes the best and brightest innovators and embeds them within the national laboratories to develop and commercialize revolutionary clean energy technologies. Kendra’s team will “graduate” from the Cyclotron Road program in November of this year. They have already received funding from the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy and Shell GameChanger for an initial feasibility study for their approach to conversion of carbon dioxide and are actively seeking industry partners to continue to scale and commercialize their technology. The MIT Technology Review’s recognition of Kendra and the follow-on funding the Opus 12 team has received indicate the value and potential of their exciting new technology and their ability to bridge the gap between research and commercialization.

Stay tuned for more information on the graduation of the first cohort of Cyclotron Road innovators in November.

For more information on Cyclotron Road, click here.