Founded in 2015, Activate empowers scientists and engineers to reinvent the world by launching startups to address climate change and other global challenges. Working between government, philanthropy, universities, and the private sector, Activate transforms scientists and engineers into high-impact entrepreneurs through the Activate Fellowship, a two-year immersive experience that equips science entrepreneurs with the skills, networks, infrastructure, and funding they need to quickly and effectively bring their groundbreaking research to market. Activate is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and does not charge any fee nor equity for fellows to participate. Activate’s entrepreneurial fellowship model originated at Cyclotron Road, founding Activate partner and the first U.S. Department of Energy's Lab Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP) started at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Activate supports fellows in communities across the U.S.: Activate Berkeley, Activate Boston, Activate New York, Activate Houston, and Activate Anywhere. Learn more at Activate.org.

I characterized a series of lithium-ion battery separators using TGA, DSC, FTIR, and Instron tensile testing. I also used electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) to measure cell resistance, a Gurley machine to measure Gurley values and a pycnometer to measure volume and calculate porosity. I learned to make coin cells inside of an argon glovebox, and designed experiments to test those cells using EIS as well as galvanostatic cycling and polarization on an Arbin battery tester. Through my internship, I disproved an outdated industry metric (Gurley value as a measure for separator resistance) and outlined several important differences between production separators that Tesla was currently using. I ended my internship by giving an hour-long presentation detailing my findings to senior managers in the battery department at Tesla.

I optimized deposition of a novel low-bandgap perovskite material for use in all-perovskite tandem solar cells. In doing so, I became familiar with spin-coating, thermal evaporation, and glovebox use. In designing my own experiments based on past results, I increased efficiencies from 14% to 17.0% for two-terminal tandems, and from 18% to 20.3% for four-terminal tandems. These efficiency increases were the primary factors which led to a paper being submitted to and published in Science in November 2016.

I worked on photoelectrodeposition of Se-Te films on silicon substrates. By tuning properties of the incoming light such as polarization, coherence, relative phase, and relative angle with precise control over the morphology of the material. Through this internship, I learned how to conduct three-electrode electrochemistry experiments, how to use an SEM, and how to analyze and threshold images. My work was published in Nano Letters as a method of effecting nanoscale patterning of photoelectrodeposited materials by changing the coherence and relative phase of optical inputs.

I studied a series of tungsten-alkylidine complexes to assess them as potential chromophores with applications to solar fuels and organic synthesis. I chose density functional theory (DFT) methods to model the energy of the electron cloud around each atom based on atomic size and electronegativity. I also chose DFT methods which modelled the effect of the solvent on the energy of each complex. I then optimized the structures for their minimum-energy configurations using the Hartree-Fock method and applied their solvation models to calculate free energies and then redox potentials for these complexes. By comparing those potentials to ones that were experimentally measured, I benchmarked this computational method for calculating redox potentials for tungsten, as well as all other third-row transition metal complexes. This allowed for high-throughput screening of a broad range of elements for properties attractive in potential chromophores and catalysts for energy applications.