Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced that application portals are now open for the Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP) 2025 Cohort, a two-year funded fellowship that helps the next generation of cleantech entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life. As regular readers know, one of the LEEP-funded initiatives is “Innovation Crossroads” operated by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

Now approaching its tenth year, this successful program embeds participants at a national laboratory where they receive funding to support collaborative research and development with lab scientists, gain mentorship and entrepreneurship training, and become part of a valuable networking ecosystem that helps eliminate hurdles traditionally faced by early stage cleantech start-ups.

Since the program launched its first cohort in 2015, LEEP has supported 203 fellows in partnership with four national labs and their corresponding nodes. LEEP alumni have gone on to commercialize game-changing technologies for the clean energy economy, with 153 news businesses started, 2,343 jobs created, and reaching $2.73 billion in follow-on funding.

Applications can be found at these links:

• “Cyclotron Road” at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, CA);
• “Innovation Crossroads” at ORNL;
• “Chain Reaction Innovations” at Argonne National Laboratory (Lemont, IL); and
• “West Gate” at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Golden, CO).

Application deadline for “Innovation Crossroads” is November 8.

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