material-science
(3)
The Ski Bum Who Put NASA's Coldest Material Into Your Winter Boots
Michael Markesbery took $10,000 from an astronaut scholarship and a material NASA uses to insulate spacecraft, and spent a decade figuring out how to make it bend. Now Solarcore® sells that trick to boot brands, the Air Force, and battery makers.
The Fund Betting That Fashion Gets Fixed in the Factory, Not the Storefront
Karla Mora and Leslie Harwell don't fund T-shirts. They fund the recycling plants, the potato-waste cotton, and the software that reroutes a supply chain - the plumbing every brand quietly runs on.
Z-Polymers
Z-Polymers is a Lowell, Massachusetts materials science company that emerged from the UMass Lowell Innovation Hub to build Tullomer, a PFAS-free liquid crystal super-polymer spun into ultra-fine fibers and 3D-printing filament. Founded in 2021 by materials scientist Dr. Michael Zimmerman, the company claims strength up to four times that of PEEK - and up to six times stronger than steel at a sixth of the weight - while printing on desktop machines without annealing. Its materials target aerospace, defense, medical devices, energy, and functional fabrics, and in 2026 it secured a strategic seed investment and joint development agreement with Japan's Kureha Corporation.