Join the Energy & Climate Club in hearing from Ozge Guney-Altay, the Director of Polsky’s Resurgence program as well as from emergent Chicago tech companies from Resurgence’s second cohort.
The Resurgence cleantech accelerator is powered by Deep Tech Ventures at the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Participating startups gain access to business training and technical advisement, premier facilities, industry mentors, student talent, and venture capital, as well as additional funding opportunities. This 9-month hybrid program is designed to support ventures that are focused on four specific areas of the cleantech industry:
Energy storage and infrastructure Batteries and grid-scale storage solutions capable of transporting and modulating dynamic energy flows.
Next-generation nuclear solutions Next-generation nuclear breakthroughs enabling a sustainable and stable baseline energy supply.
Hydrogen and alternative fuels Alternative fuels for ultra-high energy density applications in which rapid fuel-ups and safe transport are necessary.
Materials refinement and process intensification New materials/catalysts, recapture of economic minerals and their place in a circular economy; process modifiers that minimize waste and maximize efficiency.
Joining us on the 11th is Inertial, who is using turbomachinery to capture carbon emitted from fossil fuel-fired power plants, & Tanda Biotech, who is developing essential tools to enable scalable, cost-efficient and eco-friendly bioproduction for a more sustainable world. More about these two companies below:
The technology for Inertial started from an idea in grad school while building and operating hypersonic wind tunnels: if I intentionally design a bad wind tunnel, how much of the CO2 in the airflow can be condensed and can that then be removed? Over many years that idea was researched, worked over, changed, smoothed over, researched more, changed, smoothed some more, changed again, and now is finally ready to change the world. Simply put, Inertial is going to freeze water and carbon dioxide out of industrial exhaust flows using a proprietary process which can scale up to handle the massive amount of emissions produced by point source generators like power plants and cement plants. These operational scales of carbon capture would be unmatched and make a massive contribution towards achieving global carbon neutrality by 2050.
Tanda Biotech’s mission is to accelerate the growth of a sustainable bioeconomy through scalable, cost-effective, and eco-friendly technologies, fostering innovation for a cleaner and more resilient future. Filtration, the most used process in bioproduction, faces significant scalability challenges. Current systems are expensive, generate considerable plastic and liquid waste, and are not designed for future large-scale biomanufacturing. Membrane fouling further increases downtime and costs, often requiring oversized equipment to maintain efficiency. Batch-based filtration adds to these inefficiencies with frequent interruptions, high labor and utility costs, and the need for extra equipment to handle process disruptions. Additionally, batch processes complicate product consistency and hinder advanced automation. Transitioning to continuous filtration is essential for reducing downtime, labor, and energy consumption while enabling scalable, sustainable biomanufacturing. Advanced filtration technologies will be critical for achieving these goals.