INSTITUTE, W.Va. — Five West Virginia State University (WVSU) students spent their summer as part of an innovative new pilot program designed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to connect top students from minority serving institutions (MSI) with opportunities to commercialize DOE technologies.
Called MSI Connect, the program is designed to showcase how technology innovations created in the lab can be turned into products for the marketplace. Of the 24 students chosen to participate in the inaugural cohort of the program five were from WVSU.
Those students – Alexander Bailey, Zimren Dixon, Timothy Sanford, Clark Wells and Ahmad Zaman – were paired with students from other minority serving institutions into teams of three for their work in the program.
Each team then worked through the summer to develop a commercialization plan for a new technology in an area such as nuclear energy, renewables (primarily wind energy), and fossil energy and carbon management, including work such as point-source carbon capture, methane emissions reduction, critical mineral production, and removal of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere.
Throughout the course of the summer, the teams collaborated closely with researchers, and lab technology transfer staff, to learn about lab innovations and think about how research fits in the marketplace. Then, the teams developed a commercialization plan to present at a pitch event hosted at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Aug. 16.
Of the eight teams making pitches at the event, two of the teams were selected to receive additional funding of $75,000 to continue into phase two of the MSI Connect project to continue the work to bring their product to market over the course of the next year.
The two teams selected to move onto phase two included WVSU students Alexander Bailey and Ahmad Zaman.
“This is an incredible illustration of the education that our students receive at West Virginia State University,” said WVSU President Ericke Cage. “To have more students than any other institution selected to participate in this innovative new program, and then to have two of our students be part of the teams selected to move onto the next phase is a remarkable accomplishment, and one of which we can all be proud.”
MSI Connect brings together the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory with partner laboratories, minority serving institutions, and industry partner, FedTech, to connect top entrepreneurial talent within the MSI community with opportunities to commercialize DOE technologies.
MSI Connect is funded by the DOE Office of Technology Transitions’ Technology Commercialization Fund and DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, Office of Nuclear Energy, and Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy.
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