Prof. Victoire de Margerie announces the list of nominees for the 2024 WMF Scale Up and Start Up Challenges

The 10th edition of World Materials Forum will be in Paris on July 11th. 

For the 8th year in a row, Start Up nominees from around the world will present on their booths innovative and impactful solutions in order to Use Materials Smarter, Less and Longer.

For the 4th year we will also have Scale Up nominees who will show us during a plenary session how they are industrializing the breakthrough innovations for which they were previously nominated at a WMF Start Up Challenge.

Our Jury met on May 16th and was impressed by the quality of applications received for both Challenges.

You will find below the composition of the jury and the list of nominated companies (5 for the Scale Up Challenge and 13 for the Start Up Challenge).

All Awards will be announced during the WMF Gala dinner on July 11th in Paris.

The jury

  • Tadeu Carneiro, Chairman & CEO BostonMetal (USA)
  • Laurent Frescaline, Founder & Head of Technology I Pulse (France)
  • Bronwyn Fox, Chief Scientist CSIRO (Australia)
  • Gervais Jacques, CEO 5N Plus (Canada)
  • Ilse Henne, Member of the Executive Board Thyssenkrupp AG (Germany)
  • Stéphane Mangin, Université de Lorraine (France) – Vice Chair
  • Victoire de Margerie, Founder & Vice Chair WMF (France) – Chair
  • Shirley Meng, University of Chicago/Argonne National Lab (USA)
  • Martina Merz, Supervisory Board Member Rio Tinto and Siemens (Germany)
  • Hartwig Michels, President Petrochemicals BASF (Germany)
  • Bernard Pinatel, President Refining & Chemicals Total Energies (France)
  • Alberto Salleo, Stanford University (USA)
  • Nick Stanage, CEO Hexcel (USA)
  • Karim Zaghib, Concordia University (Canada)

The list of nominated companies - Scale Up Challenge

BRIMSTONE (California)
Hugo Leandri
Producing zero CO2 cement.

C12 (France)
Pierre Desjardins
Using carbon nanotubes and developing a scalable platform for quantum computing.

MITRACHEM (California)
Vivas Kumar
Iron based cathode materials for safe and low cost batteries and use of abundant materials.

SYLVATEX (California)
Virginia Klausmeier
Simplifying the cathode synthesis for lower capex green battery chemistries.

ZETA ENERGY (Texas)
Tom Pilette
Successful lithium sulfur chemistry with higher energy density than LIB and lower cost per kWh.

The list of nominated companies - Start Up Challenge

AEPNUS (California)
Lukas Hackl
Reusing Sodium Sulfate wastes as an inexpensive raw material for CAM processing or batteries recycling.

CLEAR WATT (UK)
Patrick Cresswell
Combining mobile telematics, physics and AI for an instantaneous evaluation of an EV energy efficiency in order to make second-hand EVs more valuable.

FOUND ENERGY (Massachusetts)
Peter Godart
Turning low grade aluminum waste into fuel on site with resulting lower CO2 emissions and production costs.

NANDINA REM (Singapore)
Karina Cady
Production of carbon fibre and aviation-grade alloys with reduced CO2 emissions.

N5 SOLAR (NY, USA)
Charlotte Hamilton
Durable and lightweight solar modules.

OSMOSES (Massachusetts)
Francesco Maria Benedetti
Novel membrane technology for optimum efficiency of gas separation processes.

PROJECT K (California)
Kevin Hurlbutt
Potassium ion batteries.

PUREBATTERYTECH (Germany)
Bjorn Zikarsky
Turning recycled batteries black mass into high quality pre CAM.

PURE LITHIUM (Massachusetts)
Emilie Bodoin
Producing a battery ready pure lithium metal electrode from readily available lithium salts.

RAPICURE (Colorado)
Heather Rubin
Fast and easy curing solutions to repair liquid pipelines.

ROSI SOLAR (France)
Yun Luo
Recycling solar panels to recover high quality copper, silver and silicon.

SUNCHEM (California)
Daniel Sun
Metal separation technology that allows to divide by 2 the amount of gold wasted/lost during the extraction process.

TYFAST (California)
GJ la O'
Reusing secondary vanadium from stainless steel production wastes as an anode material for fast charging Heavy Duty batteries.