Team Dynamics
What do waste wool and wastewater have in common? Stanford undergrads will use these raw materials to examine how technology, policy, and economics can align to address sustainability problems and deliver social benefits.
The Energy Impact Fellowship is a program for students who want to spend eight weeks working on a cleantech project with social impact. Fellowships count as a Cardinal Quarter experience through the Haas Center for Public Service, and students receive a stipend.
“If you want to make a difference at a startup company, choose TomKat. If you want to understand what it is like to enter industry as an entrepreneur and young, aspiring engineer, choose TomKat. If you want a family that can support you in your undergraduate career into graduate school, choose TomKat,” shared Jaydon Deras, BS ’27, who was a 2025 Energy Impact Fellow at Oleo.
Unlike the TomKat internship program, where students are often the only intern placed with a given startup, Energy Impact Fellowships support a cohort of students who work together for a single host organization. Past fellowships have focused on agroforestry, plastics recycling, and community solar projects. In 2026, two cohorts will be formed to work at different startups and with different objectives.
Recovered Potential is a startup that is rethinking wastewater. More than 50 tons of nitrogen enter the San Francisco Bay every day– one example of a global phenomena. This venture is building compact electrochemical systems that remove pollution and recover nutrients like nitrogen for fertilizer.
Kerra is harnessing the high elasticity and durability of keratin. Currently as much as 85 percent of wool produced globally is discarded, often either burned or buried. This venture is using discarded wool to improve personal care products and devise a fully biodegradable fabric.
Mark Rainier Catapusan, BS ’26, was also a 2025 Energy Impact Fellow with Oleo. “What I didn’t expect from this fellowship was to find my people,” he says. “We went from being colleagues to a close-knit community. It’s not just about the work you do, but the community you build while doing it.”
TomKat is supporting two Energy Impact Fellowship projects in 2026:
Nutrient Recovery from Industrial Wastewaters
Help Recovered Potential commercialize a modular electrochemical process that recovers and concentrates ammonia from industrial wastewater. Fellows will build TEA/LCA tools, map high-need wastewater market segments, evaluate product offtake and certification pathways, and deliver recommendations on market entry, process integration, and regulatory strategy.
Keratin-Based Materials from Waste Wool
Kerra is turning waste wool into keratin-based materials—diverting agricultural waste, supporting rural communities, and helping build a global keratin economy. Fellows will quantify emissions impacts (including sheep methane and waste-wool baselines), model supply-chain economics for scalable sourcing, and map carbon accounting and regulatory pathways to unlock climate incentives and guide commercialization.
Past Projects:
Converting Agricultural Waste into Valuable Products
This article is part of the TomKat Center Spotlight series designed to highlight the impact and trajectory of the work of faculty and students who received funding through our programs, including the Innovation Transfer Program, TomKat Solutions, and Graduate Fellowships. Stanford University does not endorse any non-Stanford entities, programs, products, or services listed in the article.
