Supporting Opportunities in Applied Research (SOAR) Panel 3: MassCEC

Series Description:
WPI’s “purpose-driven research” strategy fosters a supportive environment for translating scientific discoveries into real-world solutions. Governments, private companies, and nonprofits fund applied research with distinct priorities. This SOAR series features panel discussions highlighting funding opportunities, with faculty members sharing their experiences. This is the first of our panel showcasing funding from MA state funding agencies. 

Panelists: 
Nicole Jacobson
Nicole is a Business Development Program Manager at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), helping to connect climatetech entrepreneurs across all TRL/ARL levels with the state-funded programs and deployment partners they need to thrive in Massachusetts. She is excited by helping bridge the gap between lab and market, advancing our leadership in the energy transition. 

Yan Wang
Professor Wang, Dean’s Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, actively researches new electrodes and materials for energy storage, including lithium-ion batteries, supercapacitors, flow batteries, battery manufacturing, safety, recycling, and fundamental electrochemistry. His goal is to develop energy storage systems with high energy, power, life, cost, and safety. Yan has also commercialized technologies from his lab.

Mike Timko
Professor Timko studies the environmental and engineering aspects of clean energy technologies, with a specific emphasis on liquid transportation fuels. His work involves studying the fundamental chemical engineering science – including transport, phase behavior, and reactor design – to develop new technologies for converting under-utilized energy resources into fuels and chemicals.