Daily Archives: March 13, 2019

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The US Senate has confirmed Memphis attorney John Ryder as the newest member of the TVA board.

Nearly 13 months after he was first nominated by President Trump, Ryder will assume the seat vacated nearly two years ago by Mike McWherter.

Ryder’s term runs through 2021 on the 9-member TVA board, which currently has only seven members.

Ryder’s first public meeting with the full TVA board will be on May 9 when the TVA governing board meets in Franklin, Tennessee.

President Trump has also nominated Chattanooga native William B. Kilbride to a member of TVA’s board.

Kilbride formerly served as the president and CEO of the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce and as president and chief sustainability officer of Mohawk Industries.

Kilbride’s nomination still has to be accepted by the US Senate before he could serve on TVA’s board. His term would run until May 18, 2023 replacing Eric Martin Satz.

As Oak Ridge National Laboratory finalizes selections for the third cohort in its “Innovation Crossroads” program that accelerates new energy start-ups, Teknovation.biz wanted to provide an update on the three members of the inaugural cohort. They arrived here in May 2017 and will complete their two-year Fellowships soon. Here are updates from SkyNano’s Anna Douglas:

  • When you were selected for the inaugural cohort of ORNL’s “Innovation Crossroads” program, how would you describe the state of your technology and where you were in standing-up a start-up?At the time we were selected, we had just filed the legal framework for setting-up a start-up and were still working through a lot of the market analysis. We had demonstrated initial proof of concept at Vanderbilt for the use of the technology to produce carbon nanotubes ~ 23 nm in diameter.

 

  • Now, more than three-fourths of the way through the two-year experience, how would you answer the question?We learned a LOT through customer discovery during the first six months of the program, which led to a pivot from our initial technical focus, and are now fully committed to scaling the technology in the next 12 months and getting samples out into the marketplace. At this point, we have doubled our team with the addition of two full-time team members who have been instrumental in the technical progress we’ve made towards scaling our electrochemical growth process.

Read more at Teknovation.biz. Here are updates from Active Energy Systems and Yellowstone Energy.