Activate Fellowship 2024

What We Provide

• Essential funding - Fellows receive a yearly living stipend of $80,000 to $110,000 plus a health insurance stipend and travel allowance. This enables them to focus on their project full-time. Each project also receives $100,000 in research funding and access to at least $100,000 in additional flexible capital.
• A community of peers - Bringing technology to market can be a long and lonely road. Our fellows take this journey together as part of a dynamic community of scientists, engineers, and technologists who share what they know and celebrate each other’s victories.
• An unrivaled network - We facilitate connections between fellows and our broad network of industry executives, investors, entrepreneurs, philanthropists and other experts from academia, industry, government, and finance—any of whom can serve as advisors or partners. 
• Research facilities - Fellows access vital research tools, equipment, facilities, and expertise through collaboration with a host laboratory. Activate takes no rights to fellows’ intellectual property and works to ensure that fellows retain ownership of any IP developed during their two-year fellowship term. 
• Startup curriculum - Tailored for scientists and engineers and delivered weekly, our startup curriculum includes sessions on core business and product development concepts, VIP speakers, skill development workshops, and shared learning from other fellows and alumni.
• Intensive mentorship - Our experienced team meets with fellows one-on-one on a regular basis to help develop priorities, provide guidance, and make connections to our broader network of advisors, industry experts, and investors.

Communities

Activate Fellows form close-knit communities across the United States. Each community receives intensive and personalized support from its dedicated team.

Activate Anywhere

In every part of the U.S., talented scientists and engineers are eager to launch their entrepreneurial journeys. Activate Anywhere is a new community of fellows who are connected but not co-located. Fellows work in their local innovation ecosystem, plugged into Activate’s national network of mentorship, education, community, and other resources they need to succeed.

Activate Berkeley

Activate Berkeley provides access to an unmatched research and innovation ecosystem. Since 2015, Activate has partnered with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Cyclotron Road Division to support fellows accelerating the clean energy transition and pushing the boundaries of advanced computing. Activate’s partnership with the University of California, Berkeley gives fellows access to a deep well of additional research and laboratory resources.

Activate Boston

Activate Boston sits in the heart of a world-renowned innovation hub, a nexus for cutting-edge research from defense to energy to biotech. Fellows developing microelectronics access MIT Lincoln Laboratory, a federally funded research laboratory operated for the U.S. Department of Defense by MIT. We work with Boston-area research organizations, including U Mass Boston’s Venture Development Center and Greentown Labs, to support fellows developing energy and climate technologies.

Activate New York

In launching our Activate New York Community we are collaborating with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and Columbia University to forge New York State’s Carbontech Development Initiative and provide entrepreneurs with the resources, training, and global network needed to build and scale carbontech innovations.

Industries

Fellows work across eight industries, aligned with our broader mission to address climate change and other global challenges by reinventing our economy to be sustainable, resilient, and equitable. In each of these sectors, Activate is assembling a coalition of funders, commercial partners, industry advisers, and technology experts to help guide you. 

• AGRICULTURE
• CHEMICALS
• COMPUTING
• ELECTRICITY
• MANUFACTURING
• TRANSPORTATION
• BUILDINGS
• DEFENSE

Imperatives

Every year, Activate works with government and philanthropic sponsors to select fellows whose innovations are rooted in the physical and biological sciences and align with our eight target industries.

While Activate’s mission to transform scientists and engineers into entrepreneurs is steadfast, the problems that Activate Fellows are solving change over time. 

Each year, we select a set of Imperatives—specific, timely, and critical opportunities for outsized impact—and work with partners to seek fellows whose innovations promise to meet those imperatives.

• The Advanced Manufacturing Imperative - We seek fellows dedicated to accelerating the transition to clean energy by improving the energy and material efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing.
• The Carbon Management Imperative - We seek fellows dedicated to accelerating deep decarbonization and carbon removal by advancing innovations that show strong potential to remove, capture, convert, or store CO2 at volumes, timescales, and efficiencies adequate to meet aggressive climate goals.