The Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute (ROSEI) hosted a successful Translation to Market (T2M) Workshop for energy and sustainability technology. It was the second iteration of the event, with the first happening in the fall of 2022. The workshop was also presented by Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures (JHTV).
Held in the Glass Pavilion on the Homewood campus on October 30, the half-day workshop was well-attended by faculty, staff, graduate, and undergraduate students, who learned about three different companies that had origins with technology created in academic settings that transitioned into successful companies.
“ROSEI seeks to cultivate a robust ecosystem of EnergyTech and ClimateTech startups, born out of Johns Hopkins labs, with solutions for the energy transition,” said Ben Schafer, ROSEI’s director. “Our hope with this year’s speakers was to provide pathways for our audience to translate research innovations into startups built to win. We also wanted to highlight companies that came from Hopkins, as well as a couple with different backgrounds to provide multiple perspectives.”
The speakers and companies that were highlighted at this year’s T2M Workshop included:
- ROSEI core faculty member Jonah Erlebacher, who serves as founder and CTO for Etch, was able to provide perspective on what the process is like while working at JHU.
- Mark Juetten, a portfolio development officer for Early Charm Ventures, provided more insights about what the energy tech scene is like both in Baltimore and Maryland.
- Addison Stark, CEO for AtmosZero, discussed the importance of embracing being involved with a university when a company’s technology originates from that setting.
Other external speakers included Jonathan Glass, acting deputy director for commercialization at ARPA-E and Gregory Thiel, Gregory Thiel, the director of technology at Energy Impact Partners. Liz Burger and Christina DeMur from JHTV also spoke, as did Schafer, Susanna Thon, and Benjamin Link from ROSEI.
Though the formal schedule was informative for attendees, Schafer also noted how encouraging it was to see all the attendees interacting between talks.
“Building connections with a collaborator is usually the first step to a success story, so my favorite part of the event was seeing different people meeting each other and talking about their research,” Schafer said. “We try to do this with every ROSEI event, give time for people to talk and build relationships. The hope is that people carry on after our events and begin to collaborate on turning their ideas into solutions.”
