Building a Greener Tomorrow: Innovations in Sustainability

We are Carbyon, a start-up company founded in 2019, and we develop Direct Air Capture machines to capture CO2 from the atmosphere. Our ambition is to reach gigaton scale and substantially contribute to mitigating climate change. The basis of our technology lies the chemical reaction between CO2 and our sorbent, that we can regenerate to reuse as long as possible. The captured CO2 can be stored to be permanently removed or can be reused to produce synthetic fuels, crops or sustainable concrete.
During my presentation I will shine some light on why Direct Air Capture is so important and how science can make a significant contribution to the development of this new technology. But, besides the content aspect, I will also share on how I ended up from doing a PhD to working at Shell to working at an impact startup, what differences I encountered and what my experience is so far.

Cristina Nan is Assistant Professor at the ADE Chair at the TU Eindhoven, since 2020. Prior to this, from January 2016 til 2020, Cristina was Assistant Professor in Design and Digital Fabrication at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh. Her work operates at the intersection of architecture, robotic fabrication, craft and AI. Currently her focus lies on advanced robotic fabrication predominantly with clay and concrete.
Cristina explores hybridized material systems as well as both digital and non-digital fabrication strategies in relation to non-standard geometries. She is exploring new aesthetic expressions and conceptual approaches to design through the implementation of styleGANs as a creative driver embedded within computational design workflows.
Her research and student projects have been presented at a series of major events, including the ECC Architecture Biennial Exhibition in Venice, Dutch Design Week, Frankfurter Messe, National Museum Scotland, Ecobuild London, and the Festival of Architecture in Montpellier 2019. Notably, her team received the People's Choice Award for their parametric installation, Le Papilion D'Or.