Ep 124: Nicolas Pinkowski, Co-Founder of Nitricity

Today's guest is Nicolas Pinkowski, Co-Founder of Nitricity. Nicholas is a PhD student at Stanford in mechanical engineering, where he's focused on studying energy systems. He's also the co-founder of Nitricity, which produces ready-to-use nitrogen that uses only air, water and renewable electricity. Nicolas and his team recently won the MIT Clean Energy prize, at which I was a judge. One of the things the competition grants to the winner, in addition to money (which I'm sure he and the team care a lot more about), is to join me on an episode of the MCJ podcast. We cover a lot in this episode, including how Nitricity came to be, the impetus for its founding, progress made to date, and some of the twists and turns along the way. We also discuss the company’s longterm vision and what's coming next. We also touch upon the experience of starting a company within an academic environment and the pros and cons of doing so. Finally, we delve into what society can do to foster more of this type of innovation, t