Making Hardtech Entrepreneurship (a Little) Easier in NYC

While he was a PhD student, Diandian Zhao worked on a new way to make concrete from solid waste and fossil fuel emissions. After earning his degree, Zhao co-founded a startup that uses that technology to transform waste into valuable minerals for use in construction. The company, Carbon Infuse, will make it cheaper and easier to build infrastructure that stores CO2 — preventing it from contributing to climate change. 

If deployed at scale, the method could slash the cement industry’s substantial carbon footprint and revolutionize the economics of carbon capture. 

But as every hardtech entrepreneur quickly learns, the road from research breakthrough to widespread adoption is long and challenging. Through the Columbia Startup Fellows (CSF) program, Columbia Engineering, along with its partner Columbia Technology Ventures, is making that journey a little bit easier. 

As the inaugural CSF fellow, Zhao has a dedicated lab bench on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, access to state-of-the-art equipment and resources, and an invitation to take part in intellectual life at Columbia Engineering and across the University. Fellows in the program receive a 12-month academic appointment as a “visiting scientist.” 

"The CSF program provides some unique opportunities that we could not get anywhere else,” said Zhao, a Columbia graduate who earned an MS degree in 2022 and a PhD in 2024. “It would have been possible to get physical space for our R&D, but no other facility would have the equipment we needed to do our experiments.”

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Zhao and his co-founder, Shiho Kawashima, who is also an associate professor in civil engineering and engineering mechanics, say the program has drastically accelerated their R&D efforts. 

“The specialized characterization equipment is close to the mechanical testing equipment we need at this early stage,” Kawashima said. “You can’t find that kind of proximity outside of an academic environment. It helps accelerate our progress.”

“In the beginning, the goal of this research was to answer some very specific questions about chemical reactions that happen in this process,” Zhao said. “Eventually, I realized the technology we were creating might have commercial potential.” 

When he’s not in the lab, Zhao is on the road (and on Zoom) in an effort to find product-market fit by talking with potential customers. He says the CSF program has enabled the startup to stretch the limited seed funding it has raised. 

“We would have wasted a lot of time and money sending our samples to other universities for testing and trying to track down papers that I can easily get from the library,” he said. 

Both founders say the CSF program is giving Carbon Infuse the boost it needs to turn their research breakthroughs into hardtech innovation at scale. 

Zhao’s fellowship was made possible by close collaboration between Columbia University and Activate New York, a fellowship program and community supporting climate tech start-ups. Columbia aims to continue making resources available to startups — and to strengthen New York City’s innovation landscape — through partnerships with other incubators, tech accelerators, and investors. 

The program welcomes applications from founders of startups from across the hardtech landscape. For more information, visit the CSF website or contact Deema Abdel Meguid.