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Energy Impact Summer Fellowships

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Energy Impact Summer Fellowships

In conjunction with the Haas Center, the TomKat Center will provide stipends to Stanford undergraduates who wish to work on a sustainable energy project with significant social impact.  

Spend 8 weeks next summer working as a team with fellow undergraduate students on a multifaceted project. Fellowships are Cardinal-Quarter-eligible. The fellowship will run for 8 weeks over the summer with exact dates to be determined. 

PROJECT

The summer 2025 Energy Impact Fellowship was hosted and led by Oleo Sustainable Palm Oil Solutions. Future Impact Fellowship projects will vary each year. 

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis.

Oleo is currently recruiting for summer 2025 internship and fellowship positions. Stanford undergraduate students should apply for the opportunity to join them in expanding deployment of biomass waste-to-resource processes. 

Apply Here

CANDIDATES

Undergraduate students (any year or major) who have a passion for renewable energy and who enjoy working on projects that have tangible social value. Some relevant technical and project management experience or skills would be a plus. Creativity, curiosity, resourcefulness, and the ability to work in collaboration with others are paramount.

PROGRAM BENEFITS

This immersive 8-week summer program will include:

  • Project management experience in a collaborative team setting
  • $8,000 stipend
  • Mentorship
  • Training in sustainable energy and sustainability concepts and processes

2025 PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Research Goal

The central research question of this fellowship is: What are the economic, technological, regulatory, and commercial drivers of biomass waste-to-resource processes and how can we leverage these drivers to maximize both the environmental impact and commercial potential of Oleo’s technology.

Part 1: Economic and Environmental Evaluation

Oleo’s technology consists of a 2-part biotechnology platform that first extracts fermentable sugars from recalcitrant biomass waste via a thermomechanical process and second, uses those sugars as a substrate in a yeast fermentation, which ultimately produces oil products. The first part of this project will involve analyzing data and literature to understand how the inputs and outputs of Oleo’s process influence cost and environmental impact of production in a commercial-scale facility. This evaluation will then be used to contextualize Oleo’s technology within the broader landscape of technologies available to convert biomass waste into value-added commodities. Fellows will build a mass balance of Oleo’s process and begin building out a framework for a techno-economic assessment and life cycle analysis of Oleo’s process, in order to identify the knowledge gaps that must be filled in subsequent project phases. 

Part 2: Implementation Strategy

Oleo’s platform technology has the capability of producing a range of second-generation products, such as glucose, xylose, vanillin, and fatty acids of varying carbon chain lengths. These products can be sold in a variety of markets that must abide by different regulations. 

In phase 2 of this project, fellows will leverage their understanding of Oleo’s technical process and its unique value proposition to assess how different implementation strategies across market sectors affect revenue potential and the technology’s environmental impact. This phase will involve interviewing stakeholders across Oleo’s end-to-end value chain, including biomass waste producers, regulatory agencies, and potential corporate customers in chemical manufacturing, product formulation, and energy production. Fellows’ findings in this phase will influence the structure and scope of the techno-economic analysis and life-cycle assessment.

Part 3: Process Modeling

In part 3 of this project, fellows will capture their insights by building a techno-economic assessment of Oleo’s process to assess its production cost and revenue potential at a commercial scale. They will also build a life-cycle analysis to quantify the carbon footprint and environmental impact of products produced via Oleo’s platform. This phase will involve researching the technical specifications of commercial-scale bioprocessing equipment, reaching out to equipment manufacturers, and working with Oleo’s technical team to build accurate modeling tools. 

Part 4: Applying Tools to Maximize Environmental Impact and Commercial Viability

Fellows will leverage the information gathered in part 2 and the tools they created in part 3 to synthesize their findings and answer the following questions:

  • What process levers can Oleo adjust to lower the carbon intensity and production cost of their intermediate and end products? To what degree?
  • How can waste streams within Oleo’s process be minimized, recycled, or valorized? 
  • How can regulatory incentives in different markets be leveraged to decrease the production cost of second-generation products derived from biomass waste?
  • Which second-generation products and markets enable Oleo to maximize the environmental impact of its process?

Fellows will present their findings and recommendations in a final report and presentation to company leaders, fellowship sponsors, and other relevant stakeholders.

Apply Here

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