Three-Time Energy I-Corps Participant Drives Innovation in Tracking and Storage Solutions

Kyle Guin, CEO and co-founder of VastVision Technologies, has a unique distinction—he has participated in the Energy I-Corps program three times, each in a different role. On his third go-round, he not only mentored a team, but also successfully licensed the technology they developed.  

The Energy I-Corps program offers two months of intensive commercialization training to National Laboratory teams to identify potential market pathways and encourage successful market uptake of their clean energy technologies. 

Guin’s journey began as an undergraduate student in the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps™, continued in Energy I-Corps as an entrepreneurial lead, and culminated as an industry mentor after he left Sandia National Laboratories in 2022 to start VastVision. His role as the industry mentor for the MagTag team—sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration—was made possible by his departure from Sandia and the extensive network he built since. 

“It’s very different,” Guin said, reflecting on his transition from participant to mentor. “Being an entrepreneurial lead is very intense, in-depth, day-to-day work. As a mentor, it’s less so. I could mentor the MagTag team because I was separate from the lab, and I had a lot of contacts in the asset and inventory space.” 

MagTag is a tracking sensor that uses a magnetic elastic that expands in size when exposed to a magnetic field. It sends out a signal, receives a response, and report shifts in temperature, making it ideal for tracking certain substances. Notably, the MagTag technology works without a battery, powered solely by the magnetic field. 

Guin highlighted the technology’s potential: “Shipping companies could place one of these small tags in all their packages with dangerous goods, like hydrogen, and the tracker can sense certain environmental factors about that package. If the hydrogen starts to leak, they can detect that. As the shippers take them off the truck, they can scan each sensor and see its status.” 

Recognizing its potential, Guin’s company, VastVision, decided to license the MagTag technology. VastVision, an inventory management and asset tracking platform, currently interfaces with GPS and RFID tracking. Guin hopes to integrate MagTag technology for situations where GPS and RFID are insufficient, such as with nuclear material.  

“When burying nuclear waste underground, we’re looking at [burying the waste for] a long time period—50 or more years—and we want to be able to [locate] it consistently, without worrying about batteries,” said Jamin Pillars, principal member of the technical staff at Sandia and a member of the MagTag team. “[MagTag] can detect if there is some sort of reaction, so it becomes a fail-safe for nuclear waste storage. All we need is a loop antenna that transmits a magnetic field interacting with these tags.” 

Jamin Pillars, the entrepreneurial lead of the MagTag team, explains how Energy I-Corps changed his perspective. “It helps you grow as a scientist or engineer,” said Pillars. “We’re very technical analytical people. We don’t think about customer discovery or how the market is going to absorb this technology.” 

While MagTag is still two to three years away from commercialization, Pillars and his colleague Christian Arrington are excited to see the technology get to market through VastVision. 

“Energy I-Corps gave me a different perspective because it really hones in on that business side of the world,” said Arrington. “Working in a national lab, you’re always thinking of technical applications and needs, but not necessarily general business needs. It opened up that world to me.” 

“Joining a startup is not something I’d ever even thought about before Energy I-Corps,” Pillars said. “But after graduation, we are very much on board for it.”