30 Under 30 with Katherine Mizrahi Rodriguez, Co-founder and Chief Implementation Officer at Osmoses

Speaker A: Welcome to the Future Work Playbook. This podcast series features founders, investors, and legal talent that will help you embrace technology and transform your organization for a better future. This series is hosted by Natalie Pearce, the chair of Gunderson Detmer's Employment and labor Practice. Natalie and her guests are committed to helping you develop new playbooks to elevate your game.

Speaker B: Welcome to season seven of the Future Work Playbook podcast. This season marks Gunderson's 30th anniversary as a leader in the venture capital and startup legal world, and we are celebrating by featuring founders and investors who are building tomorrow's industries. Today, we're thrilled to introduce Catherine Mizrahi Rodriguez, a Forbes 30 under 30 and co founder and Chief Implementation Officer at Osmosis. Catherine earned her Bachelor in Science degree as well as her PhD in materials science and engineering from MIT. Her academic research, developing advanced membranes for energy efficient gas separations, laid the technical foundation for her work at Osmosis, a company she helped launch to tackle one of the industrial world's toughest challenges. Osmosis is transforming how industries produce clean energy by replacing century old energy intensive gas separations with a breakthrough membrane technology. Katherine, we're thrilled to have you here.

Speaker C: Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for that kind introduction. I'm very happy to be here.

Speaker B: Oh, wonderful, wonderful. So Osmosis is pioneering energy efficient membrane technology to transform industrial gas separations by enabling cleaner, more effective purification gases like hydrogen, biomethane and CO2. Before we talk about the huge significance of this, because there is so much to discuss, I'd like for our audience to get to know you. Can we start there, Katherine?

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Great. So when you moved to the United States from Venezuela, you were a child. How old were you when you made that move?

Speaker C: I was 12 years old, uh, when we made the move from Venezuela.

Speaker B: Okay, so middle school, basically.

Speaker C: Yes, yes.

Speaker B: When we first met, you shared with me something really interesting, that you enjoyed art and building things as a kid. I think our listeners would love to hear how that segued into leading you to pursue engineering at mit.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I would say I've always been excited and interested in arts and crafts, and at the same time, when I went into high school and started studying more, I really liked chemistry. So there was this combination of an interest in chemistry with an interest in arts and crafts, painting, ceramics, and seeing that I could merge those two interests, really by creating, uh, novel materials that are, you know, hands on physical product while being creative. So it's, it's using the Science, but also being creative, uh, really inspired me. And so when I started at mit, I wanted to study chemistry. I saw that as kind of the path. And then I learned that material science and engineering was a, uh, major that I didn't even know existed. And that is the science of understanding materials, so understanding polymer, ceramics, metals and so on. And I thought to myself, well, this is amazing. It's really that bridge of my personal, uh, interests with my love for science and chemistry and understanding the world that's around us. And so that drew me to material science. And now, I mean, at Osmosis, we're building new membranes and new materials to tackle active challenges.

Speaker B: Wow. And I have to ask, do you think that your childhood experiences, your early experiences with culture diversity sort of help shape your curiosity for science?

Speaker C: I think so. I think being exposed to so many different atmospheres and backgrounds definitely made me just generally more curious and open minded person. And thinking about science requires a lot of versatility and thought, being open minded to new ideas, coming up with new ideas, and also interacting with other scientists around the world. And so I can even think of, during my PhD, I ran this round robin study to understand how we do measurements for pure gas separation testing, essentially measuring how good membranes are, uh, at carrying out separations in pure gases or using pure gases. And so we had to work with 10 different labs to run the same test and then see how the results differed. And this was across different labs in the US but also globally. And thinking back to my background, I was so excited about that because this connects to different cultures, different methodology for doing things. But ultimately we all have a similar goal which is to run that measurement or to solve every problem. And so I think my curiosity and open mindedness that comes inherently from my background has made me more inquisitive and then by nature kind of interested in entrepreneurship and in the work that I do today.

Speaker B: Oh, uh, that's fantastic, Katherine. And you really not only collaborating with all these other labs and putting together some amazing steps, studies, but you also did something that I thought was pretty extraordinary and that was to found the Latinx Student Association, Graduate Student association at mit. What led you to want to do that?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question. I personally have benefited a lot from access to programs that foster diversity in education. And for instance, I participated in the MIT Interface program before I even decided to start at MIT or even got into MIT for my bachelor's. And I was also a Forbes foundation fellow, which is for kind of underrepresented minorities in science. And it's a very selective fellowship.

Speaker B: So it's, I think most of our listeners have heard of it. It's very selective.

Speaker C: And all of those initiatives and kind of programs that have existed have supported me in developing the skillset that I have and connecting to others that are similar to myself. And so I wanted to build a bit of a, uh, bridge within the community at mit, especially for graduate students to have connections to others who are from Latino backgrounds and maybe just haven't met or haven't connected with each other. And ironically, in undergrad at mit, there was ship, the uh, Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers that I was part of and that created a great community within undergrad. But then in grad school there wasn't any of that. And so I saw that gap within the same organization just at a different level, and worked with a few others who I had also connected with to found that organization.

Speaker B: What a beautiful way to pay it forward and to really help you find that community, uh, once again at a graduate level all the way to your PhD. That MIT has been very excited. They've given you early grants to help support the work and so continues to be a very important institution supporting the work. Let's go back to that work at mit, because your research there when you were as an undergrad and then when you were getting your PhD, really focused on developing advanced membranes for energy efficient gas separations. How was it that your academic journey in material sciences and engineering equipped you with this particular expertise in membranes?

Speaker C: So I finished my bachelor's at MIT and I knew that I really liked chemistry and I particularly liked organic chemistry and polymers. So out of all materials, my, my favorite is polymers, plastics. And I wanted to pursue a, uh, Ph.D. in kind of more focused material science really in relation to soft matter and polymers. So I stayed at MIT because there's a program called PBSM M, the program Polymers and Soft Matter that's particularly focused on M, that and it also enables cross collaboration between different departments at mit. So despite being in the Department of Material Science, I could work in a different lab outside of that department if it made sense. And so when I started, I found the Smith lab, which is the lab that I eventually joined, and it was focused on synthesizing new polymeric materials for membrane gas separations. And what I found really appealing in this specific lab is that I could go all the way from synthesis so that, you know, creative arts and crafts thinking that we talked about earlier in my chemistry affinity to building a product or a membrane that can then have real world applications that have Impact. A lot of the work that is done within labs is fundamental research that is incredibly important, but it's harder to see that connection to the application. And so what I liked about the Smith Lab in particular is that connection all the way from bare bones, small synthetic materials to applications that are very clear. And, you know, there are projects that I worked on that were with companies or funded by companies. So that connection to the real world was very clear. And so that's how it all started, I guess, in that lab. And that's what I focused on was building different materials to develop a platform that could be used for gas operations.

Speaker B: That's great. Catherine, did you meet your co founders at Smith Lab at mit? Did you connect before you decided to focus your career in this field? Or was it as a result of meeting your co founders? How did you all come together so well?

Speaker C: Zach Smith, who is. Was my former PI, is one of our co founders. And then Francesco Arcio and Holden, who really developed the, uh, initial technical piece on the synthesis side. We all met because we were all working in the lab together. And so that was the initial connection. And, you know, Covid happened. We were working on different projects together, and there was this initiative through the nsf, the I Corps program, where you have an idea and you are essentially doing interviews with a hundred different stakeholders in the industry to understand whether this idea has product market fit and has merit to be launched into a company. And so we worked really well together, and we're already connected and decided, oh, let's do this program together and see how it goes. See if there's merit and value within this technical finding that we have. And so we ran more than a hundred customer interviews. We really enjoyed working together. We saw that there was value in what we were building, and that, among other things, really spearheaded the process of building the company. I would say there was a lot of eagerness as well. Francesco, our CEO, is entrepreneurial at heart and really charismatic. And so I think there was a spark there within him that. That always existed to build something, and that's inspiring and part of bringing us all together to do it. So did I know that this was the path that I was going to pursue when I joined the Smith Lab? I wouldn't say so, but I think when you see something that is really worthwhile, you take a step back and then you move forward with it, because it's worth taking that chance and pushing forward to make it work.

Speaker B: Doing the research, the interviews with various companies, and really trying to figure out, is this a company worth Launching is there the market? And, uh, I was trying to look through my notes, but I think that I saw somewhere that right now it's actually a $15 billion market projected to quickly grow to 30, 35 billion. And we're going to get more into the science of this huge problem that Osmosis is trying to tackle. But am, um, I recollecting correctly that there is actually a huge, huge market?

Speaker C: Yes. So the beauty of these materials, these membranes and gas separations in general, is that they can be applied across a wide variety of applications. So it can run from renewable natural gas, which you mentioned before, that's CO2 separation, from methane to hydrogen separations, to oxygen separations and so on. And so this captures a wide gamut of markets and applications that then encompass that large market opportunity. And so we've always seen that value and potential for the market, which is something that drives us.

Speaker B: Okay, so for everyone who's maybe hearing about gas separations for the first time, and let's help them understand the problem, why is it that industrial gas separation is such an important challenge for our economy and our environment and everyday life?

Speaker C: That's a great question. So about 15% of the world's energy consumption is actually spent in carrying out separations. So when you think of your gas stove or even the propane that you use in a heater when you go out for dinner in the winter in Boston, all of that gas comes pure, right? So it comes pure to you because it has gone through a process of purification in advance of getting to you. And so we need to actually carry out the purification process in advance of getting the gas to the customer. And that takes a lot of energy. So the irony is that we're using the gas to produce energy to maybe barbecue or go to dinner or cook at home, et cetera. So that's providing us energy, but we actually need energy as well to purify the gas in the first place, to get it to us. And so there's these massive chemical facilities or, you know, natural gas upgrading units that are required to carry out these separations and get the gas that we need to us. There are other examples in medical applications, like oxygen generators that you might see in hospitals where oxygen is generated from air. So air is a combination of oxygen, nitrogen, argon, and there, there might be small amounts of, of other, um, components, maybe vapor, et cetera. And that all needs to be separated so that we can get the oxygen that we need in a hospital, for example. So that is what gas separations is. It's kind of the background, nobody really knows about it, but everyone uses it in the background. I don't know what to call it. But um, DOER that gets us the energy and the molecules that we need to carry out are day to day activities. And so when you think of membranes, membranes are essentially filters. So they are very precise molecular filters that can separate one gas from another in a way that is much more efficient than traditional separation processes which maybe rely on heat or on uh, toxic chemicals to carry out that separation. And so the beauty of, of the membranes that we're creating is that they can significantly reduce the amount of energy required to carry out that separation that we need to deliver the pure gases that we need for our daily basis operations.

Speaker B: I mean 15% of the world's energy consumption is just such a staggering amount. And then you think about the importance, as you said, of, of really delivering the pure energy gases. What have been the traditional methods to do the gas separations? And how does osmosis's membrane technology maybe eliminate the need for those traditional, uh, means of gas separation?

Speaker C: So for traditional methods there's a variety of them. One is distillation, which relies on thermal based changes to carry out the separation. So you're essentially getting different levels of, you can imagine gases having different boiling points, for lack of better words, or dew points, where if you cool, so cryogenic distillation, if you cool the gas to a certain amount, you're able to condense out certain gas components and then leave the rest. But that requires a lot of energy to do that. And so that's one example. Another one is pressure swing absorption where you have these sorbents which are very high affinity kind of molecules that can absorb the gas or attract the gas. And then through swings or through various technical methods, you can essentially then release the gas, absorb it and then release it. But that takes a lot of moving parts and sometimes these can be toxic, you need to exchange them, et cetera. And so that can be tricky. And then there's membranes where as I was mentioning earlier, it's more of a simplified filter, no moving parts, the simplicity of it is much higher. But traditional membranes have had challenges with having similar efficiency to cryogenic distillation, traditional distillation, or even swing absorption methods like pressure or temperature swing absorption. And so what we've developed at osmosis is a new polymeric material that is molecularly designed to have very precise separation ability. So we go all the way back to the building blocks with the monomers and the polymer and have a new Polymer structure that is microporous and rigid in a way that creates very efficient molecular selectivity for the gas separations that we are looking to carry out. And so that essentially makes your filter better. Right? You have various different filters at home for different purposes. And some filters are just not so good and some are better. This filter is able to more efficiently carry out the separation separating very effectively one thing from another, and also is able to flow a lot of the product through. So sometimes the challenges with these types of have a really good filter, but it's just like one drop at a time. That's just not giving you enough of the output that you need to make something meaningful. So what we have is a filter that filters very well and also can produce enough output to make it economically viable to carry out separations with these osmosis filters.

Speaker B: So you don't have to have that trade off that you would traditionally have. Speed versus selectivity, I suppose. And you mentioned rigid membrane. Is that important because, um, not only for the flux and the selectivity, but also because we're operating under industrial conditions and you really, if you've come up with the membrane technology, you want it to work in very, you know, sometimes, I would think, very dynamic situations. And how does the technology work at that industrial level? Because right now so many companies are doing things the traditional way, you know, boiling it, freezing it, sponge. I forgot the one technology that grabs the particles. How are you dealing with the need to maybe replace that older technology?

Speaker C: So the beauty about membranes is that there are membranes out there today. It's just they haven't necessarily been as efficient or as maybe what we believe our membranes can do is the step change compared to what's out there. So because there are membranes out there, they take up a certain percentage of the market. And so that gives us an opening to have a market base that already understands membranes and understands potential benefit of membranes. And so it's not completely new in the sense that there's never been membranes before. There are gas separation membranes out there. So that's one piece of it. The other piece is how do we build a material that's not only interesting at a molecular level and performance level, but also applicable within an industrial application and industrial setting. And that's really part of the process of investigation that we did early on with the I Core program. And looking at this material from a standpoint of is it soluble? Can we process it so that we can then take it to a contract, uh, manufacturer to help us in X, Y, Z, or is it flexible? Enough. For instance, there's some materials that I worked with in my research that you could get amazing performance, but if you looked at it the wrong way, it would just break. Um, so obviously that's not scalable. That's not something that you can then process into a manufacturable to then bring onto real world applications. So there were these other factors, manufacturability, processability, scalability, that we looked at at an early stage and that we're continuing to look at to optimize so that we can bring, you know, the best product to market. And then that combined with the fact that there is awareness for a certain percentage of the market of what membranes can do, gives us a great combination of deployability for the membrane, the osmosis membrane.

Speaker B: Great. It's really exciting to see this journey which, uh, I believe began in 2022. Is that about right?

Speaker C: 2021. But really even earlier if you think of when the research all started.

Speaker B: But yeah, right when the concept of the launch happened. Y. That's right, you did say during the pandemic. So can you discuss any partnerships that osmosis has formed, uh, to bring the membrane technology to real world industry? Because I know that's been something you've been, as you mentioned, doing a lot of research.

Speaker C: Yeah. So at the highest possible level, we have contract manufacturers that we work with to make the monomer and the polymer. We also have partners that we're working with to build our pilot skid in order to pilot the technology, which we plan to do next year. And we have also gotten non recurring engineering revenue from a customer, a, uh, global petrochemical company that we're working with and have two pilot partners lined up for pilots in Canada that are coming up. And those are just a few examples of partnerships, both from the production side, but also on the customer side. But there's so many others that we work with, you know, uh, at every phase of development and scaling and implementation.

Speaker B: Well, uh, congratulations. I recall from my research that your seed stage funding was over subscribed, which is a very good thing. People looked and you've been published in Science magazine. So it really, it really is exciting. And what is the hope? Like what difference could this technology, the success of this technology mean for our environment?

Speaker C: So I, I think the vision that we have is to create a world where separations are no longer a bottleneck for energy deployment within the U.S. and so that, for example, within renewable natural gas. And I don't know how familiar maybe the audience is with renewable natural gas. So it's separation of CO2 from methane. But um, unlike traditional natural gas that you know, you'll find in reservoirs, et cetera, renewable natural gas comes from waste. So landfills for instance, or manure from farms that is then sent to an anaerobic digester or um, wastewater treatment plants that will have all this waste that

Speaker B: is then huge CO2 emissions.

Speaker C: Yeah. And this is generating gas biogas that has CO2, methane and a few other components and that requires separations. So the biogas potential is massive because the waste that we have within the US and globally is massive. But there are some farms that are small, there are some landfills that are, that are bigger or smaller. And therefore the processing that's required for these sites looks different and the scales are different. So what that means is that right now there is a decent amount of deployment of anaerobic digester or landfill biogas upgrading facilities. But as you get smaller, or as the sites are maybe decentralized, etc. You need to have solutions that are cheaper or that are more efficient to make the economics of those projects viable. So you end up uh, in a situation where all of the easier the low hanging fruit projects are gone. And you need to identify technical solutions that can enable unlocking of the more challenging projects or maybe smaller projects where the economics don't play out as easily for traditional separation processes. And so the hope with Osmosis is that we can create technology that really debottlenecks all of this for any separations that are required. So renewable natural gases is a market that we're very excited about, that we're piloting in and that we see a lot of potential for and that we know there's this bottleneck in. But this is true for separations at large and in other areas as well. And there's always a matter of scale. As you go to smaller scale, sometimes things become uneconomic, similarly the other way around. And so building a uh, world where we can provide a separation solution that debottle next the challenge to provide bulks the energy that they need.

Speaker B: Wonderful. So you are Chief Implementation Officer at Osmosis. Uh, and that means that you lead everything from field deployment, customer success, project management and strategy. You know, you talked a little bit about, I think you said, two pilot programs that we'll be launching. Can you share any more details about what that is entails and when that's kicking off?

Speaker C: Absolutely, yes. So on the implementation side, there's a lot of work that happens on both non dilutive funding and grants as well as planning for execution of our projects. And the projects that we have coming up are those two pilots in renewable natural gas. One is at a landfill in Canada and the other one is an anaerobic digester site in Canada. So we're excited about covering these two different markets because. Or two different feedstocks because they together encompass, uh, the majority of the market, over 70% of the market for biogas. And so that is coming up. We've been to the pilot sites, doing some visits earlier this year. We have, you know, monthly meetings with them and are engaging to really optimize what we bring to the table for them and also get our materials ready. And we're at the same time, you know, building out the skid that we need to carry out the pilot on site and so on.

Speaker B: And I would imagine that another as now you're moving to the pilots and looking to scale using the technology in an industrial setting, it's really, really exciting. It's gotta be a little scary as well. What are some of the challenges that you're seeing as you are looking to scale the technology?

Speaker C: Wow, that's a great question. There are challenges all across the board, I would say, within, um, scaling of a technology. And it's all about the unknowns. It's all about, as you're developing and scaling, there are, you know, a hundred different things that you prepare for and plan for, and then there's the three or four that you just didn't know were going to come up. And so what we are working on is having very close conversations with our partners to really understand what they need to see from an operational standpoint. So a lot of the work that happens with an implementation is really focused on can this work? Do we have the right measurement shutdown procedures in place so that if anything were to go wrong or if we needed to change out, you know, the membrane during the test, we can do that. And a lot of it is kind of planning for the unexpected, acknowledging that there might be unexpected scenarios, building buffer, and really working with our existing partners to try to accelerate where needed.

Speaker B: Reflecting on your experience as both a technical innovator and advocate for diversity in stem, how do you believe, um, mentorship can influence and shape the future of clean tech leaders?

Speaker C: I, uh, really think that the problems that we face with energy efficiency, energy availability and energy abundance are massive. I mean, think about with all of this AI that's being used now, there's a, there's a massive need for energy and for sourcing. You know, all of those quick questions that people are Asking online are now consuming a lot of energy that needs more sources like traditional natural gas or renewable natural gas or electricity. And so there's a huge need to address those. And this requires cross functional collaboration and mentorship at all levels. Because a, uh, utility, for instance, that you know, is operating a pipeline that is then going to feed the source gas that is needed for a power plant that is then generating electricity, needs to, in a way mentor all partners. But then the partners need to mentor the utility and kind of understanding what's going on. And I really see that in our conversations at Osmosis, where we're looking at gas operations and seeing the variety of different stakeholders that need to come into a given room to understand a project. So I mean, even in the pilot case you have engineer, mechanical engineers, controls engineers, process engineers, and all of these different stakeholders with different expertise and different perspectives that need to form each other and in a way mentor each other so that a common problem can be solved. Because the complexity of these challenges is just so large. So when I hear mentorship and I think of mentorship within this scope, uh, I see openness and the need for different subject matter experts to inform and mentor others and also listen so that we can develop solutions that are, uh, well integrated and actually capable of enacting change within massive infrastructure that's completely interconnected and that requires new dynamics and new solutions that we haven't thought of before, again, like the example of AI. So from my side, you know, there are things that I have expertise in that I can mentor others in, but also acknowledging the areas that I am not an expert in, and getting kind of mentorship and discussions with the experts in that area, I think is the best way to deploy solutions that are actually usable.

Speaker B: Well, I mean, the world is just changing so very quickly now and I think that it is going to take greater collaboration, more creativity, really working together to find ways to face those future challenges. And yeah, absolutely agree with you that mentorship and cross collaboration is so important. You've been so very successful in your career, Katherine. What advice would you give to early career scientists and engineers, especially those from diverse backgrounds who are looking to find mentors and build supportive networks?

Speaker C: I would say maybe two things. The first is that you don't have to do everything on your own. I think we, at least in the immigrants or even kind of high achievers community, there's this sense of you have to do it all yourself, do it the best that it can be to, to prove yourself. And while there's merit in that and it can take you to high places. It's really important to also recognize the areas where you just need support and could talk to someone else and maybe get the help that you need. Being humble rather than kind of closed off and trying to just take care of everything yourself. Because even if you are the expert in everything and you can do literally everything, there are only so many hours in the day and there's so much time that you can spend in taking that through. And you can multiply your efforts by working with others and not only delegating, but also talking to people who may have a lot of information about certain things that you don't know about. So that would be the first, this detaching a little bit from feeling like I should kind of prove myself or do it all. And the second, being open minded maybe. And just in a startup, things change literally every day. We might find something out that we didn't know before or there's a change in funding opportunities or uh, a change in the incentives for a given market. And these are things that you just don't have control over. But the ability to be open and flexible and see through maybe the original plan that you had and adapt to come up with something that is still very much aligned with your mission and vision is important. So coming up with at a high level, what are the things that drive you and then understanding that everything in the world changes every day and that being adaptable is really important to both retain your sanity, but also enable you or a company or those that you're working with to move forward and still succeed in whatever you're seeking to do. I love that.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, no resilience and agility and really recognizing that things will change. You don't have to do things yourself. There is a network out there. And yeah, I'm forever grateful to my mentors for really making all the difference in the world and am a big believer in paying it forward, as I know you are. Katherine. So, Katherine, I just want to thank you so much for taking us on your personal journey from Venezuela to MIT and your role in building osmosis pioneering technology, which I think we believe will make an enormous difference in our lifetime to our economy, to our environment, to our lifestyle. I love learning about your company's impact on clean energy and uh, also your commitment to mentoring and to diversities. So thank you so much, Katherine, for being here.

Speaker C: Thank you so much, Natalie, for having me and for this effort. I think it's amazing and I hope that we see other startups and technologies also kind of move forward and make progress. And within osmosis, we've made a lot of progress. It's been a few years, but we also know there's so much work ahead of us and so much that we have yet to see. And I'm thrilled and excited to see where that's going to take us. And, you know, maybe we'll have another call where we'll, we'll share more about the outcomes of our, of our pilots and, and, uh, where things are going.

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. We're doing a little bit of a. Where are they now? Going back to our very first, uh, season, which so we would absolutely love to welcome you back, Katherine and listeners. Let me just say this has been an inspiring look at what's next in industrial innovations. And you heard it straight from one of Forbes youngest industry visionaries. And please join us for what's Next. Bye. Bye.

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