Fellows Aim To Make Critical Minerals in the US, Generate Affordable Geothermal Energy, and Build Ultralight and Advanced Batteries—With Some Help From NLR Experts This article is part one of a two-part series featuring the laboratory’s seven newest West Gate fellows. Part one profiles four startup founders. By Caitlin McDermott-Murphy The seven new West Gate fellows have arrived, and they are sharing things: a Gandalf-like resurrection, a way to get more from industrial sludge, and how to build Cookie Monster microbes. But most importantly, they are bringing seven technologies that could make American-made magnesium affordable, generate energy from just heat and rocks, create ultralight batteries and a domestic supply of nonlithium-based batteries, produce chlorine that is far less likely to explode, and more. Now, all seven entrepreneurs need an extra boost to get their technologies out into the world. That boost comes from the National Laboratory of the Rockies’ (NLR’s) West Gate program, one of four nodes in the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Technology Commercialization’s Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP), which provides entrepreneurs with access to national laboratory expertise, facilities, and commercialization resources. The 2026 cohort will spend two years at NLR, working with experts to prep their technologies for their intended markets and navigate the leap from lab to commercial success. Here, four of the seven fellows share more about what problem they are trying to solve, what they hope to get out of the fellowship, and which fictional character best represents their technology or company. Big Blue Technologies Inc. Makes Affordable Magnesium in the United States West Gate Fellow: Boris Chubukov, Chief Technology Officer What’s the story behind your company name? Chubukov and team’s first reactor in their Ph.D. days was named Big Blue 1—and it was, in fact, blue. Today, Chubukov is building Big Blue 6. It is not blue, but they kept the name “as a reminder of how far we’ve come,” Chubukov said. What problem are you trying to solve? Since 2021, no U.S.-based company has made magnesium metal, a critical mineral that has one of the highest risks of supply chain disruption. Companies need magnesium to build lighter batteries, cars, and robots or anything aluminum based, like soda cans. Although the country has plenty of the raw materials needed to make the metal here, today, U.S. companies depend on imports, which can be expensive, delayed, or cut off entirely. Now, Chubukov and Big Blue Technologies Inc. plan to change that. The company has a plan—and a new technique—to manufacture magnesium in the United States and make it affordable, too. “We have to be competitive globally,” Chubukov said. To do that, the team designed an automated, electrified smelting process that can cut material, energy, and labor costs and outperform the conventional Pidgeon process, which is slow and energy and labor intensive. “Magnesium is a problem that needs to be solved, and it’s a tough problem,” Chubukov said. In the past 20 years, about 12 magnesium production projects launched in North America. “Some of them went all the way to building a plant,” Chubukov said, “but none are running today.” To make sure their plant can be in it for the long run, the Big Blue team is taking their time. Since they invented their process back in graduate school, they pivoted and refined it into entirely new intellectual property. Now, NLR is part of their final refinements. At the laboratory, Chubukov will work with experts to test their technology at full scale. The Big Blue process also creates cement as a byproduct; NLR researchers plan to help turn that into a product that could eventually be sold in hardware stores. Big Blue’s big plan is a full-scale plant, built in the United States, that can fulfill about 10% of the country’s magnesium needs. That scale could help reduce dependence on foreign supplies and prices and “alleviate any national security risks,” Chubukov said. Magnesium might be a tough problem, but Chubukov and his team plan to, as he said, “keep pursuing and keep pushing.” What keeps you up at night? Personnel. “I’m developing and building a process that the world will hopefully run for the next 100 years,” Chubokov said. “I need to ensure the process is not only safe today but inherently safe for any operators in the future.” If your technology were a fictional character, who or what would it be? Gandalf. He falls to his doom wrestling a beast in the mines of Moria and is later resurrected as Gandalf the White. “In a way, Big Blue has gone through a similar path,” Chubukov said. Their initial smelting process (their Gandalf the Grey) was “good on paper but a nightmare to run,” he said. Once they pivoted to a new alumiothermic chemistry (their Gandalf the White), they could finally see a way to achieve full-scale, affordable production. (Maybe, Chubukov said, they will switch from Big Blue Technologies to Big White Technologies). GeoKiln Engineers the Earth To Make Affordable Energy West Gate Fellow: Alexei Tcherniak, Founder and CEO What’s the story behind your company name? GeoKiln turns the Earth’s existing geology (hence, “geo”) into a kiln (hence, “kiln”), using heat to convert stone into something new. What problem are you trying to solve? The world is hungry for more energy—specifically, affordable and reliable energy that can power modern manufacturing and artificial intelligence without disrupting power for communities and families. Hydrogen could help meet this growing demand, but today’s production methods are still costly, energy intensive, or limited to specific geographic locations. Now, GeoKiln’s team is handing production over to the Earth. “As industries and countries look for reliable, affordable sources of hydrogen, we believe the world is ready for a new approach,” Tcherniak said. With their new technique, GeoKiln repurposes oil and gas hardware to heat naturally occurring iron-rich rock that sits underground. They then turn those rocks into earthy kilns—or reactors—which can create hydrogen with minimal energy and no water injection (traditional hydrogen production with electrolysis requires much more of both). Known as manufactured subsurface hydrogen, this technique and technology could cut hydrogen fuel costs enough to make it an attractive option for industries and countries alike—no subsidies required. “We envision commercial projects operating around the world, enabling countries to produce affordable hydrogen from their own geological resources,” Tcherniak said. Now, through West Gate, the GeoKiln team plans to further validate their process, check for oversights, and move the technology closer to commercial use. For the startup, success means widespread adoption of their technology, yes, but they also hope to change how companies and countries see subsurface hydrogen. “Success would mean that manufactured subsurface hydrogen is recognized as a proven, scalable technology,” Tcherniak said, “and that GeoKiln helped change the way the world thinks about the subsurface, not simply as something to explore but as something that can be engineered to create new energy solutions.” Tcherniak believes that, as he said: “Great engineering can change the future.” What keeps you up at night? “As a startup, every week brings new conversations, partnerships, and possibilities,” Tcherniak said. “Deciding where to focus our time and resources while maintaining the speed needed to bring breakthrough technology to market is both exciting and challenging.” If your technology were a fictional character, who or what would it be? Tony Stark. Not the superhero (Iron Man) but the engineer. “He looks at complex problems and imagines solutions that don’t yet exist, then brings together science, engineering, and determination to make them real,” Tcherniak said. Last Wave Energy Makes Ultralight Batteries Photo from Ryan Brow West Gate Fellow: Ryan Brow, Founder What’s the story behind your company name? “Last Wave Energy” refers to the heat death of the universe, a commonly accepted theory that the universe will end when even that last photon (the last wavelength of light) will be unable to drive change, leaving the universe dark, cold, and nearly motionless. “Someday, there will be some last photon flying around,” Brow said. “I find it to be a weird, romantic kind of idea.” What problem are you trying to solve? Lithium-ion batteries contain lots of inactive stuff—the couch-potato materials needed to build a battery cell and move electrons around. But none of that stuff can do what a battery is made to do: store energy. A few years ago, Brow and team decided to shoot a laser through a battery to poke at the lithium and study how it moved. But to do that, they needed to get rid of all that inactive stuff in the way. To his surprise, the battery still worked pretty well. “We kind of just thought, ‘Why don’t we just always do this when we’re making batteries?’” Brow said. Now, that is exactly what Brow and Last Wave Energy are doing. Their battery technology guts up to 95% of that inactive material, which makes for an ultralight battery. But it comes with some extra benefits, too: longer range for technologies, like drones, lower manufacturing costs for electric vehicles, and the potential for electric airplanes, too. “Batteries are really the limiting factor for electric aviation,” Brow said. “They’re heavy.” Although other companies have tried to build batteries without all that excess, they tend to replace the inactive stuff with other stuff. The Last Wave Energy team does not substitute; it simply removes. Their battery is also chemistry agnostic, meaning if someone invents a new cathode or anode material that could allow cells to last longer or perform better, the Last Wave Energy team can swap that material right in. “We can work with all the traditional chemistries that are in your cell phone right now to the new chemistries,” Brow said. “That gives us an opportunity to be implemented for decades to come.” Another opportunity for longevity? West Gate. The program grants Brow and team access to NLR’s testing equipment so they can evaluate their technology and make sure it can be produced en masse. “That is a very difficult opportunity to get outside of something like West Gate,” he said. It is also difficult to build a safer, more compact, and lower-cost battery entirely in the United States—and yet that is exactly what the Last Wave Energy team aims to do. What keeps you up at night? Impatience to get going. “The more I look into this idea, the more possible it seems,” Brow said. “So, for right now, I’m just anxious to get going.” If your technology were a fictional character, who or what would it be? The little engine that could. Small but scrappy, resourceful, and never stops. Orva Energy Makes It Faster and Easier To Access Advanced Battery Materials West Gate Fellow: Evan Flitz, Founder and Principal Materials Engineer What’s the story behind your company name? Orva is a combination of Orion and Vega, a constellation and star, respectively, that people used as guiding beacons for millennia. Orva Energy uses both machine learning and artificial intelligence to quickly find new battery materials, so the company can “help direct and guide the broader energy ecosystem to a better place,” Flitz said. That mission, he continued, “led us to think about us as a guiding star, something that people can look at to head in the right direction.” And get people where they want to go, faster. What problem are you trying to solve? Lithium-ion batteries have gifted people portable electronics, like smart phones and watches, electric transportation, and energy storage for homes and the grid. But the technology has a few limitations: They depend on critical minerals, some of which cannot be produced in the United States, and they cannot always keep up with rapid changes in energy demand or safety requirements. These limitations make them a less appealing choice for applications that require especially reliable and affordable energy, like large-scale storage for the power grid or power regulation within powerlines, which helps prevent damage and outages. But a new kind of rechargeable battery—sodium-ion batteries—could be manufactured with minimal or no critical minerals and low cost without sacrificing any energy storage capabilities. Sodium may be a bit heavier, but it is 500 times more abundant than lithium and cheap to get. Just evaporate some seawater, and, poof, there you go. Now, Flitz and Orva Energy hope to make sodium-ion and other affordable, reliable, lithium-free batteries commonplace. “Even though we have raw elemental abundance of all of the things we need here in the U.S., and we have folks looking to deploy these solutions at scale, we don’t have anyone in the middle,” Flitz said. Orva Energy aims to fill that void. The company uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify and troubleshoot potential battery materials that can match the performance of lithium-ion batteries at a fraction of the cost. To further cut costs, they can also set up shop next to both mineral supplies and customers (like battery manufacturers) that need them. That, Flitz said, can reduce transportation costs and timelines and enable the company to “work with both our suppliers and our customers to deliver the best quality goods that we can.” Through West Gate, Flitz and team plan to evaluate how their materials perform in a variety of different real-world scenarios. “NLR is maybe the nation’s leading thermal modeling and safety evaluation national lab,” Flitz said. With the laboratory’s support, he hopes the Orva Energy team can grow their technology from a lab-scale success into “something we feel really confident about putting into the marketplace.” What keeps you up at night? Achieving pilot and commercial scale. “What’s nice is that our materials manufacturing process itself is inherently scalable,” Flitz said. If your technology were a fictional character, who or what would it be? Obi-Wan Kenobi, a master and guide who can create energy from nothing. “The most compelling fictional characters are only interesting because they face real constraints and are in some ways imperfect,” Flitz said. “That actually maps well to energy storage. The challenge is not just building the highest-performing material in isolation; it is building something that works across use cases.” Discover how the program has helped aspiring entrepreneurs tackle even more energy challenges, raise funds, and create jobs. Article from NLR.
