A new programme for all postgrads and innovators
By Molly Tooher-Rudd
The highly popular i-Teams innovation programme at the University of Cambridge is calling on Postgraduate students and early career researchers to join its first climate-focused projects.
Climate i-Teams will explore three emerging technologies focused on Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries, heat storage and UV light.
The hands-on i-Teams programme invites multidisciplinary student teams to assess the commercial potential of real University inventions. It puts bright students and ground-breaking university research together to develop commercially viable ideas.
As the impacts of climate change become increasingly visible there is an urgent need to understand the challenges we face, but also to develop practical solutions to them.
This is the driving force behind the new Climate i-Teams programme, addressing the need for innovation focused specifically on climate change and sustainability.
Adam Wurr, an i-Teams Inventor from the 2025 programme, said it was a great opportunity for students to gain experience in solving climate challenges.
“It is hugely timely that climate has been given its own space in the programme, especially after the summer of wildfires and drought we have just had,” said Wurr, who is Programme Leader for Geopolitics and Government at the Cambridge Centre for Geopolitics.
Climate i-Teams will launch on the 5th October, with workshops taking place every Monday evening throughout Michaelmas term before teams present their final findings on the 10th December.
The three projects in this years Climate i-Teams, span energy storage, EV battery recycling and the use of light to improve agricultural and solar efficiency.
Esther Gray from the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy is returning as an inventor after participating in i-Teams two years ago.
“I really looked forward to Monday evenings, the sessions were so engaging, and the other participants were passionate and enthusiastic about the projects,” she said.
Gray, alongside co-inventors Dr Javier Rubio Garcia and Professor Manish Chhowalla from the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, have developed a novel method for recycling spent Lithium-ion (Li-ion) EV batteries, which is faster, cheaper and less energy intensive than existing approaches and results in far less hazardous waste.
The key task for the i-Team is to help the inventors navigate the complex industry of recycling, to interview experts, gather feedback and make recommendations on the best route to market.
Gray said she enjoyed the varied outlooks that came out of an i-Teams project which combined people from different backgrounds with different types of thinking.
“It meant we were able to discover things that the start-up hadn’t considered,” Gray said.
The second project looks at developing a solution for long-duration seasonal heat storage, by inventors Luc Liedtke, Juan-Luis Pinzón Ramírez, Collin Smith, Laura Torrente-Murciano.
Their technology combines a reversible chemical reaction with proprietary materials, with the aim of storing renewable energy generated in the summer for heating in the winter.
The technology is targeted at consumers of energy for domestic heat networks and data centres as possible markets.
The challenge for the i-Team is to investigate these markets and any others, as well as the impacts of current and upcoming legislative frameworks on the timing and need for long-duration energy storage systems.
Inventors of the third project, Dr Monica Saavedra & Dr Boris Breiner from Lambda agri, have developed an active additive that converts UV light into a red light that can increase plant yields by around 20% and reduce energy requirements of heating and CO2 emissions. The additive is very efficient at this energy conversion, and is non-toxic, bio-degradable and low-cost.
The first commercial applications are to incorporate it in paint for greenhouse coating and within polytunnel sheeting.
The i-Team will investigate the use of the technology to improve greenhouse production and to explore other possible uses, for example in solar energy systems, or medical devices.
Wurr’s 2025 i-Teams project looked at KairoSim, which grew out of work at Cambridge’s Centre for Geopolitics. He and colleagues developed strategic simulations that place participants in realistic hypothetical crises to explore how governments and businesses make decisions and navigate competing pressures. Working with the i-Team helped the company really focus on the benefits they could offer as a company.
Recent simulations have explored climate based scenarios, such as the impact of melting ice caps on the geopolitics of the Arctic and catastrophic wildfire scenarios that bring awareness of the vulnerable position climate change leaves us in.
‘I’m still in touch with my team, some have even volunteered to intern for the business next summer,” Wurr said, highlighting the opportunities the programme can lead to.
Gray said the programme really helped her understand that entrepreneurship was something she wanted to pursue in her career.
“It’s a great gateway course to test the waters and see if you enjoy that way of thinking.”
Applications to take part are open until 28th September.
“If you’re a curious person and you want to learn about something new, then this is the perfect course,’ Gray said.
source: cam.ac.uk