At Activate's inception, our founders had big dreams for what fellows could achieve with our support. Ten years later, these science entrepreneurs have surpassed what any of us could have imagined. AeroShield Materials (Elise Strobach & Kyle Wilke, Cohort 2020) recently unlocked a new kind of milestone: having their innovation on display at a Smithsonian.
The new, ongoing exhibit “Aerospace and Our Changing Environment” at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, highlights how aerospace innovations improve life on Earth—from energy-efficiency to food security—especially in the context of climate change. Among the sleek displays, with aircraft and satellites hovering overhead, you’ll see a prototype contributed by AeroShield: a super-insulated window made with aerogel material, a technology originally developed by NASA for aerospace applications.
The rectangular window on display looks like any other window—it’s crystal clear—but the aerogel inside is two to three times more insulating than air, super lightweight (lighter than a marshmallow by volume), and actually more transparent than glass.
This is the breakthrough that AeroShield CEO and founder Elise Strobach made in her MIT lab back in 2019. Aerogels were first invented almost 100 years ago and were commercialized by NASA to insulate equipment in space. They’re known as the "most insulating materials ever created,” according to the AeroShield website, but they all had a hazy blue tint that limited what they could be used for. When Strobach and her team made aerogel material that was completely see-through, they opened up a variety of everyday applications.
Now, AeroShield is getting ready to boost energy-efficiency in the real world with aerogel-insulated windows, patio doors, and skylights. The team’s latest announcement is a $1M grant from Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, in partnership with WinnCompanies, to install AeroShield windows at affordable housing sites in Massachusetts—another milestone as the company moves from innovation to deployment.
When it comes to getting the public engaged with hard-tech innovations like AeroShield’s, having a presence at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is a one-of-a-kind opportunity. AeroShield’s prototype will likely be seen by millions (according to the most recent Smithsonian data, the museum had 1.9M visits in 2024, and the same number the year before).
So, what do you do when the Smithsonian comes calling? We asked two of AeroShield’s co-founders, Elise Strobach and Aaron Baskerville-Bridges, to take us behind the scenes.
How did it happen that the AeroShield window ended up in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum?
Working with them, we designed everything from where the prototype would sit inside the museum, to which other items it would be next to, to the humidity level it would be kept at. We reached out to a company that makes custom woodwork items, and they were the ones who designed the frame. There was also the process of writing the descriptions at a certain reading level and submitting photos of our employees that they could use on the wall.
From the time that we sent the prototype to the time that it finally went live was well over a year and a half. So it’s exciting for it to finally be up there in the museum, and we’re just a small part of the whole exhibit.
Why is it beneficial for the public to see a prototype like this?
ABB: To build a broader appreciation for science. Funding for space technologies, funding for fundamental research grants—it can be hard to understand how these benefits society directly. I think putting our prototype on display and showing people, “Hey, at one point, this was an Advanced Research Project that was originally designed by NASA, and here is a real product that you can use in your everyday life that has benefited from that research.” When you're in a room full of technologies like that, I think that's an incredibly powerful way to experience why we fund science and innovation.
So, we’ve been talking about an early prototype that's on display. Where are you now versus then?
Elise Strobach: Our team has grown to 25 people just in the past year and a half, we've set up a pilot manufacturing facility, and we’re starting to see our products actually be installed in real-world applications.
Next, we're going to build out a first-of-its-kind full commercial demonstration facility. We just identified the site—it’s going to be here in Massachusetts and going live in Q1 of 2027. So we will have gone from making really, really tiny samples in the lab back in 2019 to being able to make thousands of square feet per month by 2027.
We've set up a pilot manufacturing facility, and we’re starting to see our products actually be installed in real-world applications.
ABB: We’ve also announced that we've partnered with an entry and patio door company called ODL with the goal of launching our first product for homeowners in Q1 of 2027. And through another partnership, we're developing retrofits that can go on top of existing windows into commercial buildings and improve the performance without having to replace the glass.
As Elise mentioned, we’ve identified a site to further expand and really serve the broader market—the window market and the entry and patio door market—with the support of a $14.5M ARPA-E grant. That grant is an American manufacturing grant focused on taking innovations that were developed in the U.S. and scaling that manufacturing here in the U.S. as well. So we’re very excited to be working on that.
What else do you want people to know about your technology?
ABB: When we talk about energy-efficient windows, it's really about this combination of saving money as a homeowner and saving the environment at the same time. It's one of those win-win technologies.
There was a recent Wall Street Journal article about how to save money on your home heating bill, and AeroShield was mentioned, because windows play a huge role in your heating and cooling bill. We’re in winter now—we want people to know that if you're feeling that draft from your window, that is money that you're paying for heat.
What was Activate’s role in all of this?
ES: Activate saved us during COVID-19. We were spinning out the company just as COVID was shutting things down, and we had just found out that we were going to be part of Cohort 2020 in Boston.
So in 2020, I don’t think we would have even been a company to receive this ask from the Smithsonian if Activate hadn't been there helping us survive new challenges and unexpected times.
Additionally, at a time when we were only making small-scale samples, Activate allowed us to have the confidence and resources at our backs to promise the Smithsonian that we could deliver this prototype.
As we celebrate and publicize this milestone, I just really want to call out Activate’s support from a lot of different angles. There’s no other resource like it. And at a time when there are a lot of reasons to be nervous or feel pessimistic about the future, Activate’s continual investment into the ecosystem makes me optimistic.
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