Wave of the future
Clark physicist
pioneers a
patent-pending
clean-energy
technology that
has venture
capitalists
eager to back
it with bucks.
By Allison Chisolm | Photo by Rob Carlin
The timing couldn’t be better.
With energy prices rising sky-high and
taking the costs of living with it, Clark physicist
Chuck Agosta’s new company is quietly sitting clean
and green on top of its innovative cooling technology.
Although the details of the firm’s technology are still
hush-hush, it’s expected that it will give rise to a host of
alternative energy products in the near future that
could address some of the nation’s
energy challenges.
It all started with a tennis match between retired IBM physicist Arthur Williams and Clark ’s president, John Bassett.
After retiring from leading IBM’s computational physics lab, Williams had moved to the Worcester area to be near his grandchildren. But retirement didn ’t mean the ideas stopped flowing for this theoretical physicist. Between sets he asked, did Bassett know any physicists who might want to talk shop?
Birth of a business
Agosta answered the call. For nearly a year, he enjoyed weekly discussions with Williams. By year ’s end, those ideas had led to a business plan, and together they filed to create a Delaware corporation, MachFlow Energy, Inc.
That was November 2005. By August 2008, MachFlow had filed eight patents and hired its second employee to join the two founders. In between, Mike Viotti ’06 had worked for them. The business: creating an efficient, environmentally friendly way to cool things off, using rare gases, such as neon, krypton and xenon, which reduce friction and thus reduce power consumption.
“We’re building a new kind of heat pump, based on the Bernouilli effect,” says Agosta. “The principle that keeps planes in the air also offers a way to cool things.” On a basic level, an air conditioner uses a heat pump to force hot air to move in a direction it wouldn ’t naturally take, he explains, such as from a warm academic office out to the even-hotter outdoors on a summer afternoon.
Trade secret So how does the name MachFlow connect with efficient air conditioning?
“Many of the properties of fluids are measured in relation to the speed of sound, or Mach number, ” responds Agosta. “Our technology depends on flowing gases, and the Mach number figuresprominentlyin the equations.”
The precise nature of their idea and the specific gases involved remain a trade secret, as their patents are still pending. But as Agosta explains, the end-product itself is also unknown, as they have not decided which market to target.
Determining the market – and evaluating potential partners to help them reach that market — will influence the final version of their product. Should they sell to the commercial market, which requires fewer contracts, but more bulk sales, or sell direct to the consumer, through a catalog or big-box store?
“The end-user really affects our design, so that’s a very important business decision,” notes Agosta.
Venture financing One early business decision that the two founders had to make was where to find financing for their new venture. As with most start-up enterprises, they asked family and friends, but two in particular underwrote their first round of funding: Mukesh Chatter, who founded Nexabit Networks and later sold it to Lucent Technologies, and a prominent European investor, who wishes to remain anonymous. Clark University also has a stake in the company.
That initial funding helped them develop “proof of principle” – a preprototype to show other investors that their idea had merit as a developing technology.
So between teaching classes (including “Energy and the Environment”), advising graduate students and (for the past year) running the Physics Department, Agosta has made the rounds of more potential funders at venture capital companies. His family has helped at this stage too, as his wife, Lucy McQuilken M.B.A. ’00 works for Intel Capital, where she identifies investment opportunities for the world ’s largest semiconductor company. She introduced him to two-thirds of the 22 venture capital firms that he spoke with, he says.
In exchange for a percentage of the company, venture capital firms will invest in new businesses where they see good potential for future profits, which they return to their investors. In MachFlow ’s case, Menlo Park, California-based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers saw just the type of investment they are targeting. MachFlow learned in June that it won $2 million in funding from them.
“We couldn’t have had better timing,” Agosta says, smiling. “We have a clean-tech idea, when major venture capital firms have decided clean tech is the wave of the future. ”
Sound business advice With the $2 million, Agosta’s company is also gaining a new adviser, Bill Joy, who was chief scientist of Sun Microsystems for more than 20 years before joining Kleiner Caufield as a partner in 2005. Among many other considerations, Agosta feels that Joy will help them understand the right questions to ask as their company matures.
“Where can we make the biggest difference? Who is willing to work with us?” Agosta asks. Looking at the business from a scientist’s perspective, he notes, “there are so many equations.” And the fluctuating cost of energy makes their calculations more difficult for where and how their product will be manufactured.
Back in the lab, Williams is making calculations that don’t involve balance sheets, and running computer simulations to generate data more quickly. Now on a partial leave of absence, Agosta is building test products. “We’re probably a year away from a good prototype,” he explains. “Then we’ll have something to show to investors.”
Twenty-five years of study have prepared him for applying the physics of thermodynamics to a clean-energy challenge, but the background required to run a business has not been on his curriculum vitae. He ’s tapped former Inc. magazine editor-in-chief George Gendron, who now leads Clark ’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program, as a valuable source of advice. With Agosta ’s scientific training, he knows how to ask questions.
Addressing energy challenges “The great thing about physics is there is so much knowledge you can apply to something else, ” he says, noting that his years of research on how helium works at very cold temperatures (close to absolute zero) have helped him understand how heat can be transferred via gases.
“I’ve been interested in alternative energy for years,” he says. As a child growing up in the energy-crunched 1970s, he had a front row seat on the nation ’s initial forays into alternative energy. Agosta reminisces about a 12-foot-wide windmill that he and his high school friend attempted to build in Hungtington, N.Y. —although he admits that they never quite completed the project.
In 2001, Agosta was one of the first owners of a Prius when the hybrid car came on the market. Today, it has 150,000 miles on it.
Twenty years from now, he asks, will people look back and say the Iraq War was a blunder? Or is it more likely they ’ll say “what were these people thinking when the world energy supply was outstripped by growing economies? ”
Agosta is doing his part to address our nation’s energy challenges. “Although right now I am focused on this company and making it successful, I am elated to be part of the solution, ” he concludes. “It’s one way to stay in this technical field, and I have a real motivating passion to continue to help innovate in energy and the environment. ”
Learn more about Professor Agosta and Clark's Physics Department .
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