Today's guest is Ilan Gur, the CEO of Activate and the Founder of Cyclotron Road. Cyclotron Road is an entrepreneurial fellowship program that pairs PhD fellows working on promising scientific breakthroughs with grants that pay their salaries. Access to a bunch of expensive equipment and showers them with mentorship to try to bridge the gap between early academic research that shows great promise and actually turning the corner to become a company. Prior to founding Cyclotron Road, Ilan launched two science-based startups including Seeo, an advanced battery company that was acquired by Bosch in 2015. He was also a program director at ARPA-E. He holds a PhD in material science and engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.

In today’s episode, we cover:

• Overview and origin story of Activate & Cyclotron Road
• Ilan’s time at ARPA-E and key learnings
• The 3 components of Activate’s entrepreneurial fellowship program
• How it works, application process, etc
• Relationships with corporate partners, government agencies, etc
• How the organization is funded
• Key learnings from initial cohorts
• Expansion plans
• What is missing that would help accelerate their efforts
• How you and I can help

Links to topics discussed in this episode:

• Activate website: https://www.activate.org/
• ARPA-E: https://arpa-e.energy.gov/
• Berkeley Lab: https://www.lbl.gov/
• Opus 12: https://www.opus-12.com/
• DARPA: https://www.darpa.mil/
• Nicole Systrom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoleschuetz/
• Sanjay Wagle: https://lightsmithgp.com/team/sanjay-wagle/
• David Danielson: http://www.b-t.energy/ventures/team/dave-danielson/
• Raymond Weitekamp: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondweitekamp/
• Horst Simon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/horst-simon-6b3417/
• Cheryl Martin: https://arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=taxonomy/term/851/all
• Mosaic Materials: https://mosaicmaterials.com/
• Bill McKibben: http://billmckibben.com/
• Al Gore: https://www.algore.com/

You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at [email protected], where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Enjoy the show!

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant