Cohort 2022 Finalist Presentations
Welcome, from Activate CEO Ilan Gur
Welcome, and thanks so much for sharing your time and expertise with our Cohort 2022 finalists this week.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen that the Activate Fellowship can be a powerful catalyst for scientists who are hungry to reinvent the world with their research. Activate Fellows and alumni have launched category-leading startups, attracted hundreds of millions for their new ventures, and transformed research into never-before-seen technologies and products.
We’re so proud of our fellows' success. But the greatest pride comes from seeing the extent of their growth through the fellowship, and the degree to which Activate and our broader community’s support was transformative in their journey.
That’s why we put so much time and energy into selecting the new cohort of Activate Fellows every year and why we’re so grateful for your engagement.
The Activate selection team has been hard at work reviewing a record 504 fellowship applications, narrowing down the number of Cohort 2022 finalists to 61 incredible teams with deep academic or industrial research experience. While the majority of our finalists are advancing technologies to confront climate change, several are focused on broader sustainability and conservation, agriculture, microsystems, and defense. Those we select as Activate Fellows will be supported across our existing communities in Berkeley and Boston as well as two new communities:
Activate New York, launched in partnership with NYSERDA and foundational partnerships with Columbia University and other local research institutions.
Activate Anywhere, which we’ve custom-built to support entrepreneurial scientists anywhere across the country willing to go all-in to bring their research to market.
We’re thrilled that these new communities will give us the capacity to support more fellows just as the world needs their innovations most. As the race to combat climate change intensifies, the influx of new venture, growth, and infrastructure capital has created a stronger pull for early-stage innovation than ever before.
Our increased scale is letting Activate better meet that demand through efforts like our new Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Imperative that will support fellows with new entrepreneurial approaches to large-scale permanent CDR across all of our communities.
Our progress this past year has only been possible thanks to the hard work of our team and committed support from partners like you. In 2022, we’re committed to scaling our impact further and look forward to working with you on exciting new ways that can take shape.
I hope you enjoy the week ahead and are as inspired as we are by the Cohort 2022 finalists.
Thank you for all you do to support the success of Activate and our fellows!
Onward!
-Ilan
Ilan Gur
CEO, Activate
Questions? Let us know via email.