Dr. Laurent Pilon currently serves as a Program Director for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). He comes to ARPA-E from the University of California, Los Angeles where he is a professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. His area of research focused on the nexus of interfacial and transport phenomena, radiative heat transfer, and material science for the development of sustainable energy conversion, storage, and efficiency technologies. What brought you to ARPA-E? First, the recent fires and the major drought in California gave me a sense of…

ARPA-E awardee Brimstone Energy raised $55 million in Series A funding in a round co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and DCVC in April of 2022. This is one of the largest ever Series A rounds for a materials-science startup and follows Brimstone’s $5.1 million seed round raised in November of 2021. Brimstone showcased their technology as part of the First Movers Coalition at 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Brimstone Energy’s CEO Dr. Cody Finke presented their breakthrough commercially scalable, environmentally friendly process for…

2022 saw a series of exciting achievements at ARPA-E. Now, at year’s end, I want to take a moment to recap and appreciate the hard work of our team members, awardees, supporters, and other stakeholders. Thank you for a wonderful year of driving impactful energy innovation. New Programs In 2022, ARPA-E launched four new focused programs covering a wide range of energy applications, several second phases of existing programs in areas such as electric aviation and floating offshore wind, and three potentially disruptive Exploratory Topics. We also announced selections for three of our most…

ARPA-E Principal Investigators Dr. Wei Chen, Dr. Ayman El-Refaie, Dr. Fang Zheng Peng, Dr. Eric D. Wachsman, and Dr. Joseph Wang were recently announced as National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellows. NAI recognizes academic inventors who demonstrate a prolific spirit of innovation and whose inventions make a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and societal welfare. Learn more about the Principal Investigators’ (PIs) ARPA-E projects below👇 PI Dr. Wei Chen’s DIFFERENTIATE project at UT Arlington develops a machine learning-enhanced mixed-variable…

On December 22, the United States Senate confirmed Dr. Evelyn N. Wang as the next Director of ARPA-E. Dr. Wang comes to ARPA-E from MIT where she served as the Ford Professor of Engineering and Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. During her time at MIT, she focused on thermal management, nanoengineered surfaces and materials, and water harvesting and purification. Dr. Wang was previously the Associate Director of the MIT Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center, which is a DOE Energy Frontiers Research Center. She worked as a Technology Expert and Researcher for…

Today, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced the first-ever achievement of “scientific energy gain” in a controlled fusion experiment. Scientific energy gain, a term used by fusion researchers, is the condition where fusion energy exceeds the input energy crossing the containment-vessel boundary, which encapsulates the plasma science of the experiment. In the case of the NIF specifically, scientific energy gain and the term “ignition” are used interchangeably (more on that below). To understand the significance of scientific energy gain at…

Held in Washington DC from October 25-26, Ocean Week 2022 brought together teams from ARPA-E’s Aerodynamic Turbines Lighter and Afloat with Nautical Technologies and Integrated Servo-control (ATLANTIS) program, Macroalgae Research Inspiring Novel Energy Resources (MARINER) program, Submarine Hydrokinetic And Riverine Kilo-megawatt Systems (SHARKS) program and other related projects to discuss advances in their technologies and collaborate to help solve their shared challenges. Ocean Week represents an important opportunity for teams to come together to participate in panel discussions,…

ARPA-E awardee Bridger Photonics, a Montana-based company developing methane detection technology, raised $55 million in funding from Beaverhead Partners, a syndicate composed of Madison Valley Partners, Carica Sustainable Investments, and Next Frontier Capital. The investment – one of the largest investments from venture capital seen in the state of Montana – will allow Bridger Photonics to continue its rapid growth and bring in new employees for their recent office expansion.Bridger Photonics’ Gas Mapping LiDARTM (GML) methane detection technology is composed of LiDAR sensors and…

The leaves are changing, the crisp Autumn air is arriving, and with it, the holidays! One holiday we are particularly excited about celebrating here at ARPA-E may not be on your radar. Today, ARPA-E is celebrating Manufacturing Day! Manufacturing Day is an opportunity for manufacturers to give folks a behind-the-scenes look into their manufacturing processes and how they have adapted in the modern era. This year, we have decided to take a deep dive with three SCALEUP 2019 teams as they have gotten into full swing with scaling their manufacturing processes. The goal of SCALEUP is to…

Dr. Ahmed Diallo currently serves as a Program Director for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). His focus at ARPA-E is on potentially transformative research & development to enable commercial fusion energy. Tell us about your background and what brought you to ARPA-E. In terms of my professional background, I am a scientist at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory – one of 17 DoE National Labs. I have been there for about 13 years working on fusion and low temperature plasmas. During my tenure, among other projects, I managed the Innovation Network for Fusion…