The winners of the pitch competition are: 

• First Place: Lukas Hackl (ETA) for “Aepnus Technology, an Electrochemical Platform Technology for the Refinement of Battery Minerals”
• Second Place: Bishoy Kamel (JGI) for “Rapid Development of COVID Precise Diagnostics”
• Third Place (tied):
  • Nick Buraglio (ESnet) for “Hecate: Directing happiness to internet service provider customer” (artificial intelligence/machine learning-driven traffic engineering for high profile networks
  • Peter Grant (ETA) for “SmartRecirc—Near Zero Waste Hot Water Distribution”

• Prizes included funding for winners to continue their lab-to-market journey. Lukas won a prize of $5,000 to conduct customer discovery, Bishoy won a prize of $2,500, and Nick and Peter each received $1,000. Lukas will also represent Berkeley Lab in a DOE-wide pitch competition.  

The judging panel included:

• Jeremy Greeter,  Senior Technology Commercialization Associate, IPO 
• Robin Johnston,  Biosciences Strategic Industry Engagements and Entrepreneurship Lead, JBEI
• Shanshan Li, Senior Technology Commercialization Associate, IPO 
• Reshma Singh, Program Director of IMPEL+, ETA
• Rachel Slaybaugh, Division Director, Cyclotron Road, ETA