Environment

GigaCrop

Brief Description

Manufacturer of bio-derived hydrogen peroxide using synthetic biology intended to make photosynthesis better. The company engineers enzymes that are used instead of traditional chemical catalysts to remove organic solvents during the production of hydrogen peroxide, allowing the process to occur in any environment while reducing carbon emissions.

GigaCrop Founder and CEO Dr. Christopher Eiben earned his PhD in bioengineering at UC Berkeley, focusing on synthetic metabolism and protein engineering in the lab of UC Berkeley Professor Dr. Jay Keasling, a pioneer in...

ChemFinity Technologies

Brief Description

ChemFinity Technologies is tackling one of the most urgent challenges of the energy transition: the critical mineral shortage. The company leverages highly tunable porous polymer sorbents that selectively extract more than 20 different metals and other elements from liquids and gases. ChemFinity has developed two forms of materials: sorbent beads, which function like a Brita filter but target specific metals, and membranes that purify water while simultaneously capturing valuable metals. The technology has the potential to efficiently recover metal from various waste...

Ceres, Inc.

Brief Description

Ceres, Inc. produced seeds of genetically modified crops used for biofuel production. The biotech company, based in Thousand Oaks, California, with a subsidiary in Brazil called Ceres Sementes do Brasil, operated from 1996 to 2016, when it was acquired by Land O'Lakes.

Inventors

Robert Fischer, Yeonhee Choi, Van-Dinh Dang, Mary Gehring, Robert Goldberg, Michael Hannon, John Harada, Tetsu Kinoshita, Tomohiro Kiyosue, Linda Margossian, Yukiko Mizukami, Nir Ohad, Jack Okamuro, Ramin Yadegari

Company Founders

Richard Hamilton, Benjamin Schapiro

Timeline...

Bio-H2

Brief Description

Bio-H2 was founded to commercialize a proprietary photosynthetic hydrogen production process that utilizes microalgal cultures.

Inventors

Anastasios Melis, Michael Seibert, John Benemann, Marc Forestier, Maria Ghirardi, Hsu Ching Wintz, Liping Zhang

Timeline 2002. Company founded

RareTerra, Inc.

Brief Description

RareTerra is developing a one-step environmentally friendly bio-process for selective rare-earth element (REE) extraction, separation, and purification that doesn't rely on harsh acids or high temperatures and pressures. RareTerra’s technology eliminates the costliest and most hazardous steps of the manufacturing process, and is compatible with complex, dilute, and waste REE sources. The company's proprietary process leverages the power of genetic and metabolic engineering to unlock the remarkable capacity of microbes to separate REEs from other metals and bioaccumulate...

Water Harvesting, Inc

Brief Description Water Harvesting Inc. was formed in 2018 to commercialize atmospheric water harvesting systems based on metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and address the global challenge of water scarcity. MOFs work for atmospheric water harvesting even under very arid conditions. Inventors

Farhad Fathieh, Nikita Hanikel, Markus Kalmutzki, Ievgen Kapustin, Hao Lyu, Mathieu Steven Prevot, Omar Yaghi, JingJing Yang, Bing Zhang

Company Founders

Frank Ramirez (Berkeley Law, JD, 1979), Chris Kay, Eugene Kapustin (UC Berkeley PhD, 2018, Chemistry), David Kuo (UC Berkeley, MS, 1985, Ph.D...

Atoco

Brief Description

Atoco was created to leverage decades of advancements in reticular chemistry and nanotechnology to fight climate change. The company is tackling the causes of global warming and the resulting water scarcity by developing sustainable and transformational solutions in the fields of Atmospheric Water Harvesting and CO2 Capture – all built upon Professor Omar Yaghi’s discoveries in molecularly engineered materials. When Yaghi pioneered reticular chemistry in the 1990s, he did not envision that this breakthrough could change the world. He was more focused on the task at hand:...

Reticular Labs

Brief Description

Developing practical water harvesting technologies to address global water scarcity.

Inventors

Nikita Hanikel, Steven James Lyle, Hao Lyu, Lac Ha Nguyen, Wentao Xu, Omar Yaghi, Bing Zhang

Timeline 2023. Company founded

Lygos, Inc.

Brief Description

Lygos' technology goes beyond engineering microbes and includes fermentation and purification development. Our goal is to manufacture and sell chemicals. This work has been supported, in part, by over $6.5MM in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and National Science Foundation.

Timeline 2011. Company founded Inventors

Jeffrey Fortman, Leonard Katz, Jay Keasling

Oswald Green Technologies, Inc.

Brief Description

Oswald Green Technologies, Inc., is an environmental solutions company with a proven carbon-negative technology for reclaiming water, energy, and nutrients from municipal, industrial and agricultural wastewater. The Advanced Integrated Wastewater Pond Systems (AIWPS) technology, in which wastewater passes through a series of ponds to be treated, involves the use of algae photosynthesis. The algae produce oxygen that allows aerobic bacteria to break down remaining contaminants in the water. The water is then reclaimed through a series of tertiary processes for reuse and...