The National Science Foundation has awarded $150,000 to a University of Alabama startup company that is working to make a more effective and longer-lasting catalyst to be used in chemical reactions.

Martin Bakker, a UA associate professor of chemistry, co-founded ThruPore Technologies with Franchessa Sayler, who earned her Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University this past May.

The idea originally formed when Sayler began analyzing existing catalysts for a colleague at the University. The catalysts proved to function quite poorly in her tests, and she saw the opportunity to begin producing a more effective carbon catalyst sheet to be introduced into the market. An initial $50,000 NSF Innovation Corps grant allowed for research to begin on the new catalyst, which led to the latest grant.

The larger grant will be used to do product testing to remove any sort of risk from the production process. Because ThruPore’s catalysts will be used in multi-million dollar production facilities, investors within those facilities are hesitant to make a change that has performed well only on a small scale. This proves difficult for ThruPore Technologies who have, so far, only been able to produce a relatively small number of the catalysts at once.

“These are very big plants, and when you have a billion dollars invested in a plant, you take no risks,” Bakker said. “It’s very difficult to get something new in, because that is a risk they are going to have to take.”

ThruPore is currently looking into having a joint venture with a larger company to be able to have a larger and more sustainable synthesis of the product. The team is in the process of moving into a rented space in the University’s Alabama Innovation and Mentoring of Entrepreneurs building, which houses multiple startups in a small-business incubator.

“Initially, the most supportive people were over in AIME,” Sayler said. “I was a Ph.D. student. I knew nothing about business; I had never even taken a business course. They hold your hand, they teach you about writing a business plan and all these other things I never even knew you had to do.”

Neither Bakker nor Sayler have had any experience in the business world outside of academia, but the environment of the University allows startups to grow without of some of the typical pressure associated with the business world and lets them focus on the similarities between academia and business instead of the differences.

“In one sense running a small business is not terribly different from running a research group,” Bakker said. “However, business is now, now, now, now, now. Academia is, I wouldn’t say mañana, but there is this tendency of, ‘I can’t do it right today; I’ll do it tomorrow.’”

The expansion of ThruPore Technologies will also continue to open up opportunities for students at the University.

“By bringing University of Alabama-developed technologies to the marketplace, we can grow the economy and help propel job creation,” Carl A. Pinkert, UA vice president for research, said. “We are pleased to have more than a dozen startup companies located on campus. The opportunity to work within and alongside these innovative companies is another way we’re exposing our students to technology and opportunities that benefit them both now and in their futures.”

Sayler said she believed merging business and science did not negatively affect her research.

“I think that it helps steer it in a direction that is beneficial to everyone,” Sayler said. “You are focusing science on what needs to be done.”