AI-powered materials discovery for designing better gas adsorbents

Backed by decades of expertise in materials informatics and chemical engineering

What We Do

Industrial gas separations are the engine behind millions of products and technologies that impact us every day. However, these processes are currently performed with outdated and expensive methods, resulting in massive costs for companies and hundreds of millions tonnes of emissions every year.

To make adsorption more widespread, there’s a need for adsorbents (“sponges”) that are more selective to the right gas, more robust to extreme industrial environments, and more efficient to operate. That’s where we come in. Using our proprietary platform, we design customized adsorbents for specific operating environments. Customizing the adsorbent to a specific process drastically reduces both the capital and operating costs of getting the system up and running.

There are better ways to perform these separations while still meeting consumer and energy demands. We focus on adsorption, where a “molecular sponge” selectively soaks up a desired gas from a mixture. Adsorption is up to 90% more energy-efficient than traditional methods!

How We Do It

Proprietary AI/ML Model

  • We have what we believe to be the largest dataset of experimental adsorbent measurements in the world.

  • Model generates candidates in silico for a given separation and set of operating conditions.

Integrated Laboratory Testing and Feedback

  • Lab automation enables rapid validation and feedback to constantly update the model in an active learning loop.

  • Iterative testing and feedback quickly converges to a high-performance adsorbent customized for a specific use case.

Meet the Team

  • Curtis Lightburn

    CO-FOUNDER/CEO

    Curtis has 20+ years experience helping B2B companies of all sizes grow - from his own start-up, to being part of the leadership team of a high growth internet infrastructure company that he helped take public, to the leading tech and telecom companies globally during his 15 years at Boston Consulting Group. Curtis earned his MBA from RHSmith School of Business and his BA from the University of Pennsylvania. At First Light, Curtis leads business development efforts and teams with Anthony and Matt on product development.

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtislightburn/

    curtis@firstlight.earth

  • Matt Rivera

    CO-FOUNDER/CTO

    Matt earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Georgia Tech in 2022, where he was lab-mates with Anthony. His thesis focused on purifying complex hydrocarbon mixtures with composite membrane materials. Following grad school, he was awarded a prestigious post-doctoral fellowship at MIT to work on developing AI/ML algorithms for designing high-performance adsorbents. At First Light, he leads the development of our proprietary ML platform that designs customized adsorbent solutions for whatever environment our customers require.

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-rivera-572057b3/

    matt@firstlight.earth

  • Anthony Vallace

    CO-FOUNDER/CSO

    Anthony earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Villanova University in 2021. His thesis focused on developing zeolites for different gas separations as well as physics-based adsorption modeling, in collaboration with Air Products and Chemicals. Following grad school, he was awarded a competitive post-doctoral fellowship position at Georgia Tech, where he first met Matt, to work on developing transport models and advanced materials for CO2 capture and catalysis. At First Light, he leads laboratory efforts, bringing ML-generated materials from the lab to the real-world.

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-vallace/

    tony@firstlight.earth

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