Columbia Launches Startup Fellows Program to Extend Research Assets to Entrepreneurs

“We are pleased to offer the university’s resources and expertise in this area where time is of the essence,” said Alex Halliday, founding dean of the Columbia Climate School. “Solving problems of this scale will require collaboration with academics and industry, and Columbia is happy to serve as the backdrop for that exchange of ideas.”

Within the parameters of a precisely defined scope of work and rigorous processes and governances, the Startup Fellows will be able to leverage Columbia’s specialized equipment and facilities to accelerate their solutions to climate and energy challenges faced by urban hubs like New York.

“Columbia Engineering has a long history of applying our faculty’s expertise to urgent climate-related challenges, including those requiring so-called tough tech innovations in areas like energy storage, energy conversion, and carbon capture, utilization, and storage,” said Shih-Fu Chang, interim dean of Columbia Engineering. “Embedding entrepreneurs in our labs will accelerate the technology translation process and inspire deeper collaboration, leading to discoveries that will help address the most pressing issue of our time.”

Columbia researchers with available equipment and facilities critical for tough tech startups are invited to apply to host an entrepreneur, who will work out of their lab for a year. Startups that have raised no more than $1 million in dilutive funding and are focused on climate and engineering are invited to learn more and apply here. The program is expected to kick off in January 2022, with the first cohort of Fellows starting on campus in early 2022.

Columbia University and Activate will leverage support from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to create a research, development, and commercialization hub and carbontech entrepreneurial fellowship program located in New York. Activate, a nonprofit entrepreneurial fellowship program, enables innovators in climate tech to leverage funding and research facilities to facilitate the rapid commercialization of climate solutions. Founded in 2015, Activate has supported more than 100 fellows in Berkeley, California, and Boston. Its New York fellowship community will utilize the CSF Program and Columbia’s state-of-the-art facilities and lab space for this new cohort.