Activate Updates: October 2026

Activate Fellows are doing what was previously considered impossible. Making crops resilient to pests and disease, without pesticides or genetic modification. Creating plastic-free clothing with none of the environmental or performance trade-offs of today’s materials.

Over ten years and more than 350 fellows in, we’re seeing the full fellow journey play out, and this fall it has traveled coast to coast. At Houston Climate and Energy Startup Week, geothermal giant Tim Latimer (Fervo Energy, Cohort 2018) headlined a fireside chat, while the week was anchored by Activate Houston’s “Meet the Cohort” event introducing our newest fellows. At Climate Week NYC, current fellows and alumni, including from our inaugural Cohort 2015, spoke on stages across the city and let attendees see and touch their working technologies.

Next stop: Berkeley. On October 21, our inaugural Activate Global Fellows arrive from Singapore for their first U.S. immersion. Come meet them.

Every one of these journeys began with early support: funding, training, and a community that lasts long after the fellowship. If you’re a scientist or engineer ready to take your research out of the lab, your journey could start here. Applications for Cohort 2027 close October 30. Join an upcoming webinar to learn what we look for and how to put forward your strongest application.

Hard Tech to Market: Semion Protects Crops by Activating Plants’ Own Defense Mechanisms

Semion (Victoria Coll Araoz, Cohort 2025) is using science to solve a massive problem: pests and diseases increasingly threatening our global food supply, and the toxic pesticides farmers currently use to combat them. Coll Araoz believes Semion could offer one of the fastest deployable solutions for agricultural resilience—not by killing pests or genetically modifying plants, but by using natural compounds to reawaken plants’ own defense mechanisms. Semion’s latest technological breakthrough gets them even closer to that vision.

Hard Tech to Market: Supercarb’s New Class of Fiber Could Change How Performance Clothing Is Made

The $2T textile industry is approaching a reckoning, as its environmental costs grow too big to ignore and consumers demand better alternatives. Supercarb (Hitesh Manglani, Cohort 2024) is racing to deliver a solution: plastic-free textiles that are both sustainable and high-performance—something that doesn’t exist today. Its breakthrough is a new class of fibers made from carbohydrate waste, like seaweed, citrus, apple, grape, potato, and sugar beet. Now, major apparel brands are partnering with Supercarb to bring its first-of-a-kind fibers to market faster.

A Week of Hard Tech in Houston

Activate Fellows and alumni at every stage of the science founder journey showed up at Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week in September, with Activate Houston’s “Meet the Cohort” event anchoring the community-powered week.

Science Founders Central to Climate Week NYC

Activate Fellows, alumni, and partners shaped the conversation on science entrepreneurship at Climate Week NYC—from strategies for accelerating university technologies, to the importance of early, non-dilutive funding, to our popular showcase of working technologies you can see and touch.