Prof. Victoire de Margerie announces the list of nominees for the 2021 WMF Scale Up and Start Up Challenges

The World Materials Forum 7th edition will be dedicated to “Green Materials Technologies for Sustainable Growth”

For the 5th year in a row, Start Up nominees from the entire world will present on their booths innovative and impactful solutions in order to Use Materials Smarter, Less and Longer.

And for the 1st time, Scale Up nominees will show us during the Gala dinner how they are industrializing the breakthrough innovation for which they had been nominated at a previous WMF Start Up Challenge.

Our Jury met on March 24th and appreciated the impressive quality of applications received for both Challenges.

You will find below the composition of the jury and the list of nominated companies (3 for the Scale Up Challenge and 12 for the Start Up Challenge).

The 3 Awards (Grand Prix Scale Up - 50 000 €, Grand Prix Start Up - 50 000 €, Coup de Cœur Start Up - 20 000 € ) will be announced during the WMF Gala dinner on June 18th in Nancy.

The jury

  • Jos Burger, CEO Ultimaker (NL)
  • Christophe Cabarry, CEO Special Chem (France)
  • Tadeu Carneiro, CEO Boston Metal (USA)
  • Edith Coune, COO Innovation Fund (Belgium)
  • Prof. Reinhold Dauskardt, Stanford University (USA)
  • Prof. Bronwyn Fox, Swinburne University (Australia)
  • Prof. Alexander King, Critical Materials Institute (USA)
  • Prof. Stéphane Mangin, Université de Lorraine (France) - Jury Vice Chair
  • Prof. Victoire de Margerie, Vice Chairman World Materials Forum (France) - Jury Chair
  • Bernard Pinatel, President Refining and Chemicals Total (France)
  • Nick Stanage, CEO Hexcel (USA)
  • An Steegen, CTO Umicore (Belgium)

The list of nominated companies - Scale Up Challenge

CARBIOS (Clermont Ferrand, France) - Start Up Nominee 2017
Martin Stephan
Unique enzymatic-recycling of PET that can use all kind of PET wastes as feedstock (including opaque PET) to make transparent food grade recycled PET.

 

CYCLADEX (Carson City, Nevada) - Start Up Nominee 2017
Roger Pettman
Cheaper, greener, safer and more effective gold recovery process with a disruptive chemical process (no sodium cyanide). 50% cheaper in raw materials and 35% less in Capex compared to the sodium cyanide process.

 

POLYSTYVERT (Montreal, Canada) - Start Up Coup de Cœur 2018
Solenne Brouard
New technology to recycle closed loop polystyrene thanks to in depth purification process which allows the recycled product to be extremely pure with the properties of a virgin product.

 

The list of nominated companies - Start Up Challenge

ANTHRO ENERGY (San Jose, California)
David Mackanic
Polymer technology that integrates with existing manufacturing capabilities and increases the battery life of wearable electronics by a factor of five.

 

BLACKLEAF (Strasbourg, France)
Yannick Lafue
Novel graphene chemistry with high product concentration (up to 800g/l), production at ambient temperature as well as low capital and opex intensity.

 

C12 QUANTUM (Paris, France)
Matthieu & Pierre Desjardins
Developing carbon nanotubes to quantum computing with the goal of speeding up highly computing tasks currently out of reach of even most powerful supercomputers.

 

ETS (MIT/Berkeley, USA)
Daniel Stack & Joey Kabel
Heat resistant ceramic bricks housed in thermally insulated steel containers in order to store surplus electricity and deliver zero carbon high temperature heat for Bulk Materials production.

 

INOPSYS (Mechelen, Belgium)
Steven de Laet
Treatment of side streams from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries in order to recover clean water and valuable elements (Palladium, Platinum, Zinc...).

 

LIXO (Paris, France)
Marjorie Darcet
Combining computer vision and miniaturisation of algorithms to analyze plastics waste flows and improve plastics waste valorisation.

 

NEW GENERATION TANKS (Lausanne, Switzerland)
Gilles Rocher
Innovative hydrogen storage pressure tanks made of thermoplastic composites that are lighter, recyclable, more durable and easy to integrate into vehicles.

 

NITRICITY (San Francisco, California)
Nicolas Pinkowski & Joshua Mc Enaney
New low cost process to produce nitrogen fertilizer at the point of use while using only air, water and renewable electricity.

 

NOON ENERGY (San Francisco, California)
Chris Graves
Long duration renewable energy storage that is twice smaller, 3 times lighter and 10 times lower cost than current Li Ion systems.

 

QUANTUM VENTURA (San Jose, California)
Srini Vasan
More efficient and less polluting electrochemical process that safely dissolves non ferrous metals from electronics leading to complete recovery of precious metals (silver, gold...).

 

SYLVATEX (Berkeley, California)
Virginia Klausmeier
Simplified synthesis process to manufacture EV cathodes with uniform dispersion of lithium, shorter reaction time, reduced energy consumption & lower total production costs.

 

UBQ MATERIALS (Tel Aviv, Israel)
Tato Bigio
Innovative conversion process that transforms household waste into a patented biobased thermoplastic material with multiple profitable B to C applications.