Ambrish Kumar (MSE MEng candidate) didn’t expect to win when he made his pitch for net-zero hydrogen production at the Falling Walls Lab Toronto this past August — but he did just that.
“I was working on Nanodes, the startup I co-founded with Rutvik Solanki (UTIAS MEng 2T3) and Siva Subramaniam (UTIAS MEng 2T2) at The Entrepreneurship Hatchery, when one of my advisors told me about Falling Walls and the chance to present in Berlin, Germany,” he says.
“By the time I presented at the Toronto event, I had practiced my pitch so many times because of my Hatchery experience. Still, winning felt so great. Getting validation for an idea I’ve worked so hard on was especially motivating.”
Kumar’s winning pitch, Breaking the Wall of Green Hydrogen Production, made the case for Nanodes, which reduces the high-cost of net-zero hydrogen produced through electrolysis.
“Hydrogen will play a very important role in reducing carbon emissions in hard-to-abate industries, such as steel, ammonia and transportation, which rely on fossil fuels,” says Kumar, whose MEng is supervised by Professor Hani Naguib (MSE).
“To reach our net-zero goals, it’s imperative that we use hydrogen from electrolysis, which is made using electricity from renewable sources and water.”