Acting Director & Deputy Director for Technology

Dr. Jennifer Gerbi, Deputy Director for Technology at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), is currently serving as Acting Director. Dr. Gerbi leads the Agency’s development, launch, and execution of high-risk, high-reward energy R&D programs.

Previously as a Program Director at the Agency, her programmatic focus at ARPA-E included improving the energy efficiency and management of buildings via advanced sensing systems and storage, novel insulating materials for windows, and renewable energy generation via photovoltaics.

Prior to joining ARPA-E, Gerbi worked at Dow Corning in multiple capacities. She started at the company in 2011 as a Program Leader in the company’s Business and Technology Incubator. In this role, Gerbi built and led a next-generation solar portfolio. Gerbi then managed a global team as a Business Builder, leading new business development for a lithium-ion battery program. Gerbi’s most recent role at Dow Corning was as an Applied Engineering and Technical Service Leader, where she led an electronics application engineering and development team, working directly with large global customers to enable technical solutions via silicones in consumer and crossover healthcare electronics markets.

From 2007 to 2011, Gerbi served as a Senior Materials Scientist at The Dow Chemical Company, focusing on the copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar technology effort, which included growing a small lab-scale environment into a commercial-scale effort within three years. Gerbi served her postdoctoral fellowship at Argonne National Laboratory, developing thin film diamond coatings for electronics and healthcare markets. She also worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois on novel diffusion barriers.

Dr. Gerbi holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also received an M.S. in Physics from the University of Virginia and a B.A. in Physics from Bard College.

Director of Climate

I am passionate about technologies that meaningfully reduce carbon emissions and contribute to a cleaner environment. At Actuate, my job is to design and run programs that get emissions-reducing technologies on the ground faster: experimenting with new approaches that will speed demonstration, deployment, and scale-up of climate change mitigation systems.

Prior to Actuate, my career has taken me through leadership roles in corporate R&D, policymaking, and analysis.

• Director of Technology Strategy for Exelon, 2016 - 2021. Exelon is a Fortune 100 energy company with over 12 million electricity and gas customers and one of the largest and cleanest generation fleets - including the biggest nuclear portfolio. At Exelon, I led the Corporate Strategy technical team. I advised the company on energy technology trends, invested in early- and mid-stage energy storage technologies, and ran Exelon’s partnership R&D program.

• Director of the Office of Energy Supply Security, U.S. DOE Office of Policy and Systems Analysis, 2013 - 2016. I was responsible for policy and analysis related to coal, gas, and nuclear power and energy cyber and physical security.

• AAAS Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, 2012-2013. My focus areas included nuclear power and waste issues, energy finance, and electricity storage.

• Ph.D. in Engineering Systems, MIT; S.M. in Nuclear Science and Engineering, MIT; S.M. in Technology and Policy, MIT; B.S. in Physics, UCLA.

Prior to joining BEV, Phil was a Senior Technical Program Manager at Google X working on several early stage energy technology projects, and before that as an Associate on the Google Energy and Renewable Energy Investment Teams. He was a Fellow working at the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), the Senior Energy Analyst at The Alliance for Climate Protection, and an Alternative Power and Energy Storage Analyst at Lux Research.

Phil holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University, and an MBA and B.Sc in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Managing Director - Activate

Aimee Rose’s career has centered on converting technology into products from invention conception through worldwide sales. She earned a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from MIT for the study of a new class of materials for sensing application. At FLIR Systems, Aimee led the commercialization of new explosive detection technology from her Ph.D. laboratory to full-scale production and world-wide market share. The resulting Fido explosive detection systems were deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and airports nationwide. She received national recognition for these outcomes including the U.S. Army’s Greatest Invention Award and TR35 Young Innovator Award and Humanitarian of the Year from MIT’s Technology Review Magazine. Aimee then co-founded Advanced Fabrics of America (AFFOA) as Chief Technology Officer. She was responsible for defining and executing an investment portfolio to transform fabrics into high tech, high value-added products to revitalize the US textile industry. Aimee joined Activate as Managing Director to launch and lead its Boston program. Activate’s entrepreneurial research fellowship program supports technical founders in turning their inventions into products and services that benefit society.

Activate empowers scientists to reinvent the world by bringing their research to market. Our two-year fellowship is a secure path for fellows to start their journey as entrepreneurs—providing the time, resources, and guidance to develop as leaders and mature their ideas. With our support, fellows grow their teams and de-risk their technology. Many attract their first financing rounds and hit key product milestones during their fellowship. Today, we support 20-30 Activate Fellows a year through our Berkeley and Boston Communities. Activate Anywhere is our newest community of entrepreneurial fellows working from qualified research facilities anywhere in the U.S.. We plan to continue to scale the number of fellows working to deliver solutions to address climate change in order to address the grand challenge of this decade.

Anil Achyuta is an investment director and founding member of TDK Ventures ($200M AUM) that invests globally in early-stage startups that leverage fundamental material science to unlock an attractive and sustainable future for the world. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of TDK Corporation, a world leader in electronic solutions for the smart-products universe. Anil is passionate about the energy and healthcare sectors, as he believes these are the most impactful areas in building a sustainable future, a mission that is directly in line with TDK Ventures’ goals.

At TDK Ventures, he has reviewed over 1500 start-ups and invested in nine companies: 1) Autoflight - an electric vertical take-off and landing company; 2) Genetesis - a magnetic imaging-based cardiac diagnostics company (Board Member); 3) Origin – a 3-D printing mass-manufacturing company; 4) Exo – a hand-held 3-D ultrasound imaging company; 5) GenCell – an ammonia-to-energy hydrogen fuel-cell company; 6) Mojo Vision – an augmented-reality contact-lens company, 7) Battery Resourcers – a direct-to-cathode lithium ion battery recycling company (Board Observer), and 8) Fabric8 Labs – an electrochemical deposition metal 3D printing company (Board Observer), and 9) AM Batteries – a dry-electrode-based lithium ion battery manufacturing company.

Of his nine investments, Anil has secured two exits: GenCell IPO’d on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (GNCL:IT), and Origin, which was acquired by the #1 3-D printing company in the world, Stratasys, for $100M.

Anil was voted one of the Rising Stars in 2021 by Venture Capital Journal and was ranked #2 Rising Star in 2021 out of 20,000 corporate venture managers globally.

Prior to TDK Ventures, Anil held leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies including L'Oréal, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, and Draper. He has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northeastern University and received his MBA from the University of Florida - Warrington College of Business. He has authored over 15 peer-reviewed journal publications and holds five U.S. patents.

Anil Achyuta’s featured articles, link here

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anilachyuta/

https://www.tdk-ventures.com/

Partner & Head of Science at Lowercarbon Capital

Clea is a Partner and the Head of Science at Lowercarbon Capital and leads all of the firm’s technical research, development, diligence, and scientific strategy efforts. Clea’s distinguished career has always been focused on solving the climate emergency through innovation in technology, business models, and policy.

Prior to joining Lowercarbon, she worked at San Francisco-based energy consulting firm, E3, where she developed electricity resource planning models and economy-wide decarbonization plans for entire states, utilities, and asset owners, with a focus on the role of hard science emerging technologies like hydrogen production methods, long-duration energy storage, biomass conversion, carbon sequestration, geothermal and advanced nuclear. She led the analysis on over 15 projects in her 2 years at E3 including “Achieving Carbon Neutrality in California” (link) for the California Air Resources Board, “Net-Zero New England: Ensuring Electric Reliability in a Low-Carbon Future” (link) in collaboration with the Energy Futures Initiative, and another on “Examining the Role of Nuclear for Decarbonizing the Pacific Northwest”(link).

Clea also co-founded her own company focused on access to clean cooking fuels in West Africa, having previously worked on clean energy access and investment across emerging markets in East and North Africa. Some of her field research is summarized here. Before that, Clea worked for Veolia, a global leader in waste management and conversion, where she developed investment strategies for non-ferrous metal extraction from biological waste streams and monitoring technologies for ozone-depleting substances.

Francesco M Benedetti is CEO and Co-Founder of Osmoses, and 2021 Activate Fellow. He earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Bologna, Italy, and worked as Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Benedetti received a 2019/2020 MIT Energy Fellowship, and was an NSF I-Corps Entrepreneurial Lead in 2021. In his free time, he enjoys playing rock music on his keyboard, playing basketball, and building communities. He also serves as the President of FAIL! - Inspiring Resilience.

Industrial purification and separation processes account for 15% of the world's energy consumption and 16% of the CO2 emissions. This is because we still use energy-intensive, century-old technologies. At Osmoses, we developed a clean solution to change this: molecular filters that can purify hydrogen and natural gas, and can perform carbon capture at scale. Our product is a compact membrane module and we target the $10-20 billion gas and vapor separation market. We are committed to transform the way chemical separations are performed and contribute to tackle climate change while generating value for our customers.

Hara is a globally-minded climate tech innovator and practitioner. As a venture investor, she worked alongside entrepreneurs building and scaling next-generation energy, transport, and manufacturing solutions. As a consultant, she helped the world's largest institutional investors and industrial companies navigate the energy transition. As an engineer, she investigated opportunities for process innovations for Chinese solar PV manufacturers and built engineered clean energy systems for sub-Sahara African farming communities. Having advanced climate solutions across maturity stages, across verticals, and on four continents, she is now dedicated to accelerate the rate of climate innovation.

Linda is an engineer working on battery R&D with a background in Materials Science & Engineering from MIT. She is a cofounder of Volta Foundation which hosts the monthly Battery Brunch community and edits the BatteryBits publication.

Tim Holme is QuantumScape’s Chief Technology Officer. Dr. Holme has served as QuantumScape’s Chief Technology Officer since January 2011. Prior to joining QuantumScape, he was a Research Associate at Stanford University from June 2008 to January 2011. Dr. Holme holds a B.S. in Physics, a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Yen T. Yeh is an energy industry veteran with over 10 years of experience working with battery systems at MIT, Apple, and leading startups in Silicon Valley. Yen is the President of the Volta Foundation, Editor-in-Chief at BatteryBits.org, and co-hosts the monthly Battery Brunch community connecting energy industry professionals with energy investors, policy makers, and academics.