On today's episode of Afrinu podcast, if you want to commercialize a product, spawn a startup,
develop climate solutions to emissions free base load electricity, get high impact funds
and evaluations on your innovative ideas, then listen to the end to get enriching details
as we bring you a big catch in the industry, Lakshana Hoode. Lakshana is an investment
associate at the engine where she brings over a decade of experience in academic research and
commercialization of climate focused technologies. Prior to working at the engine, she helped build
activate baston an entrepreneurial fellowship program supporting science innovators from concept
to first product. Lakshana was also at APAE a high risk high impact funding agency within the
department of energy USA. Lakshana holds a phd nuclear engineering from University of California
Berkeley and an image in mechanical engineering from imperial college London. A big catch to have
someone as big as you on here. So very happy. Not at all. It's it's really my pleasure to be here.
Oh thank you so much. I sincerely appreciate that. Yeah absolutely absolutely and i'm really
looking forward to the conversation. Tell me about you and what you do. Absolutely absolutely yeah
and thank you once again for for having me on the pod pastury and and and maybe just for a little bit
of context you know we both know each other through the on-deck climate tech fellowship
which you know i'm really thankful that i got to meet so many amazing people such as yourself
in that fellowship. So i um my my name is Lakshana Hidar and i thank you for clarifying your name.
Thank you. Yeah yeah absolutely because the name is really really unique so it's good for our audience
to know how to pronounce it. Cool. It's a difficult name yes it's an Indian name. Mine is more difficult.
Have you tried to pronounce mine? Jeremiah Mbazor? Okay there you are. You tried. Good try.
You laughed it correctly. Yeah you're right. My name is Mbazor Jeremiah. So you're correct. Oh great.
It's just that i pronounce it a little bit faster because it's my name so just the way you pronounce it
is like China or something like that so. Cool. Yeah yeah perfect. Yeah so i you know i i grew up in
in Belgium did my undergraduate studies in the UK at Imperial College in mechanical engineering. I was
always very interested in kind of science and math and that kind of thing so wanted to get into
engineering and then while i was doing my undergraduate studies i um i sort of became fascinated with nuclear
engineering and the potential for nuclear engineering to um to solve some of our climate
change problems especially given that it's a emissions free source of baseload electricity which is
um it's it's not easy to find solutions like that that can uh yeah you know that can
uh yeah like readily combat some of these climate change issues and of course you know i i understood
that there were a lot of controversies around the space you know like the the issues around the nuclear waste
disposal but i was still really fascinated by the by the potential for these technologies and
um and i was starting to learn more about advanced nuclear reactor designs that could combat some of the
challenges that our existing nuclear reactors were facing um and so i came to UC Berkeley to get a PhD in nuclear engineering
so i studied advanced nuclear reactor designs i i worked on the heat transfer of the nuclear reactor core
in a fluoride salt cooled high temperature reactor so that sounds so technical yeah yeah it was it was
definitely a very technical uh PhD with a lot of experimental work and um you know computational
work uh some theoretical work it's like it was a mix of a lot of a lot of things and um and it was it was an amazing
experience to be able to um work on advancing some of these technology wow it's it's it's so amazing
like i mean like at what point because i begin to wonder like someone um especially um from
india originally although you said you grew up in belgium which means a lot of the lifestyle of the
of the develop world must have infiltrated or like been in you already so i began to wonder like at what point
begin did you develop the interest to go into nuclear technology like at what point what like what was the
the the spark that made you say oh this is it for me like and especially going into the advanced
nuclear technology because um for me coming from a developing world i would be interested in gen 4
reactors and the advanced one but i will not be looking at home perhaps maybe at the immediate
um level except maybe in looking at the future because um will like be more receptive to kind of
um proving technologies and not the advanced ones except we want to leapfrog as usually in africa so
at what point did you get that spark uh that came to you to say okay i'm going to do this yeah that's a
great question and i honestly can't really pinpoint an exact moment where something just clicked for me
um but i do remember uh during a class in high school in one of my physics classes we were talking about
different ways to generate electricity and and i remember the page on nuclear had you know had uh had pros and cons
and that was the only page that had pros and cons all the other pages like solar and oil and gas like
they were all just like pros so and and i like to tell people that i've always been drawn to controversial
topics uh because i love to kind of delve deep into why something is controversial and yeah and um
and so that was so i would say that certainly got the idea in my head that i want to learn more about
nuclear technology and how it can be used for electricity generation and then just yeah and then
like throughout my undergrad and you know i i kind of kept you know kept up to date with what was happening in the field
and um and research in the us at least and advanced nuclear reactors was really picking up and uh there was lots of
uh you know research funding in in these types of areas and so uh that's what really um kind of cemented the idea for
me that i wanted to work in this space wow and now your journey has really taken you to like the the highest
echelon of of research and also organizations that that deal with people that have ideas and new ideas of
starting up new products or technologies and this brings me to the next question about
the area where you are working and that's the activate fellows and from your background you you said that
um you you helped to start up the activate fellows in the boston office right you have to build
yeah you have to build activate boston and can you tell us a bit about activate boston and what it means
and activate in general because i understand from the under climate fellowship here we met
um you talked a lot about the activate fellowship and maybe our audience would like to hear more about it
and know what you have to say about it perhaps it's yeah might be what they want to get into yeah
absolutely um so yeah so my my journey has kind of taken me away from nuclear actually at this point
obviously yeah but still still very much involved in in kind of keeping up to date with what's happening
and um yeah so i you know i i spent about a year and a half at an organization called activate which
is a non-profit that operates an entrepreneurial fellowship program uh that's really focused on
empowering scientific founders that want to spin out their academic research into uh into a company
into into something that can be commercialized that's quite unique that yeah yeah i think it's um
you know it's a really great opportunity for you know for the entrepreneurial focused researcher
to be able to kind of you know spend two years so the activate fellowship is the two-year program
um where you know activate provides a living stipend so you don't have to worry about
you know sleeping on your mother's couch while you're trying to spin out the company
as well as a small research stipend as well and the idea is that you know in these two years
let's try to build that initial prototype that uh that meets commercial specifications
um or let's try to fail really fast you know so that's another way to learn very important
yeah fail in first right yeah yeah absolutely um and so so that's what the that's what the
activate fellowship is really about and it's really around um around hardware-based technologies
that can have a large social impact so of course climate tech falls into that um but you know climate
tech is not the only type of technology that that activate has under its umbrella um and and so
yeah so so that's that's kind of how the program operates and um the program like one of the other
sort of benefits of being in a program like that is that you're you're gonna be with other
entrepreneurs who are in the same kind of boat is yeah yeah if you think you think if you want
to float you float together cool nice yeah yeah and it's really nice to have like peers that you can
talk to and you can kind of learn from um and and as well as just having access to a large network
that activate has and i cannot i cannot then i've actually yeah yeah i kind of had i cannot have uh i
kind of had a kind of um foretaste of that kind of environment in the on-deck fellowship because you have
a wide variety of people with different ideas although you have one big umbrella idea of the
climate but people have different solutions they've come to present for this so uh perhaps that's
kind of a similar comparison to what the activate fellowship presents i guess yeah yeah for sure
and and activate is very much focused on sort of supporting that very early stage um in helping
grow the company uh helping you network with various partners investors uh strategic who might be
able to kind of you know help you grow your company as well and um yeah yeah so what's what's then
actually i've moved to um the engine which is an early stage venture capital fund uh that's focused
on investing in um you know lab lab breakthroughs academically search lab breakthroughs that have a
large societal impact so do you have any example any example of maybe maybe what you've maybe come out
to it in in this fellowship maybe any example of maybe eventual organization or maybe a startup
that sprung up from the engine or the activate fellowship yeah yeah absolutely so the engine
has around 33 portfolio companies right now um you know so they just close their it's it's a large
portfolio and and these companies are you know either focused on climate tech or human health or
sort of advanced systems infrastructure type stuff and so you know one of the big companies
that the engine invested in is called commonwealth fusion systems uh which is a company
that's going to be generating electricity through fusion power wow that's cool so yeah yeah and this
is a this is a this company has grown really big and it's you know wow that's that's more than 150
employees and there's going to be uh they're building a pilot plant now here in massachusetts wow
so it's it's very exciting for that yeah that's really really interesting okay so um it's very
amazing and also very thought provoking how you've navigated your career through the nuclear field
and also in the startup area and entrepreneurship and and the thing surrounding it so it's quite
interesting to see how this has grown and how you grown in it as well so this brings me to the
next question about um because we have a lot of young people that are listening to us and 60%
of the people in sub-saharan africa are young people and you can be very sure that the larger
portion of people listening to the podcast are young young stars so i wonder like looking at
your career path and the way you've grown in your career it will be very very challenging and
captivating for a lot of young stars and also talking from the developing world's point of view
a lot of things need to be done i wonder what are your thoughts and what has helped you along the
way as you progressed to becoming who you are at this point now please yeah that's a great question
and i would definitely say i would say two things uh so one for me was kind of having um
not so much a clear idea of where i wanted to be because i had no idea that i would become i would
be in venture capital ten years ago um but more around that i really wanted to be in a space where
i could have an impact on climate change so that was sort of my guiding star to all of the decisions
that i made throughout my career um so you know when i was uh when i finished my undergraduate
studies i was applying for jobs and one of the jobs that i got was um with an oil and gas
services company which would have paid me really really well i would have been super well off at a
very young age um but then i i didn't want to be in the oil and gas space like i wanted to wow
that would be so strange to hear in these parts of the world everybody wants to work in the oil
company in nigeria especially in most african countries absolutely and that's because it's you
know it's a it's a very lucrative space like you you know you're you'll be set for life right yeah
most likely uh but i i really wanted to try something different like i wanted to
work on a technology that could potentially help with climate change um and so that that was one of the
you know that was kind of a guiding principle for me i guess i mean it really depends on on the
person but for me that's what really helped me make decisions throughout and the other thing i would
say is you know just having you know trying to find a really strong supportive network of people as
well you know that might be your your family um your friends people from uh you know from some
some job or like the on-deck climate tech fellowship um you know people that you can just kind of talk to
uh about decisions that you want to make and also express your controversy as well yeah absolutely
absolutely exactly these are people who will call you out if they think that you're not doing the
right thing right so yeah uh so i would say um yeah yeah you know it it's it's comes to a point where
you you just need to leave your comfort zone at some point you know when you're in a place where
everybody is like nodding to everything you do everybody's like you are like the the good in the
good books of everybody even though you are not making any impacts like you don't make any change
there is no impact generally there's the need kind of break out of that box kind of and to make a very
strong stride that will make you that will launch into the next level and that's really very
commendable on your part so uh i want that being in the us and um 20 percent of the electricity
generated in us is from the nuclear and uh the atmosphere does not seem very conducive although
there are a lot of startup companies that are bringing up new technologies uh i i don't i don't
want to name them at this point but i'm very sure that um your company alone is already like looking
at um companies and people that are like developing new technology that will be very useful what in the
us and for the international market so i wonder like what's the what's the future like although you've
drifted away from nuclear but you cannot take nuclear away from you you know it's still in your
system i believe right yeah absolutely and what do you think is the future like what's the future like
for nuclear in us and kind of in the in the world if you might have a grasp on that
i would love to see more nuclear um in both in the us and and the world of course and i feel like
especially in the developing world i feel like there's a lot more opportunity for new nuclear
bills right because um you know there isn't any baggage that uh i feel like yeah because
populations are growing in the developing world like you could just look at like india for example
there's just a lot more demand for for a clean baseload electricity right um so i mean pollution
is already a big issue in in india for example um and and and so is blackouts um they happen constantly
in india that's very normal here as well in nigeria especially oh right right right and and it's
like yeah it just becomes so normal but it's uh there there are solutions after right like there are
um and so you know nuclear might be one of those solutions and um and and i think you know like
especially with these advanced nuclear reactor designs they they're going to be able to combat
some of the legacy issues that these old generation one generation two reactors have um so i feel like
i feel like people might be more receptive to the advanced nuclear reactor designs okay that's very nice
but i wonder like i have a little um um concern if it's if it's if that's if that's what it means
my concern is this like having the advanced nuclear technology having to use that without having
it been proven somewhere like you know the nuclear field i don't know if it is becoming more like
something you can just get the latest model and use without testing the old one you know like a
smartphone you can start using an android phone from at at this point without even learning how a
phone works and you can just go off from that point and be a phone user but i wonder how it it is in the
in the nuclear technology aspect like is it is it easy for one to just leapfrog into the advanced
nuclear technology like in a place like um africa where we don't have that benefit of learning from
proven technology likes the gen three and gen three plus um options i wonder like what do you think
about this you know in india you already have nuclear power plants working from the russian
technologies and difference and thanks to the um new regulation i mean new um international law
that removed the trade embargo between us and india so you can now trade technologies or do
a kind of technology transfer so but already you have an existing technology going on so what do you
think like especially from the start up point i know you may be being a start up um accelerate or
kind of pressing you might have some things you need to get from maybe the scientist or the guy who's
proposing a new technology that will make you approve it or fund it but when it comes to the guy who
wants to buy it he it's yeah it might make a good business case but going um in the operation and
maintenance and also in in the future if i may say do you think this might be a problem in the future
i mean i think you know as you very rightly mentioned like there are still a lot of challenges and
i think um you know a lot of these a lot of this can be mitigated with strong um government
support and public private partnerships which is what is trying to happen in the u.s. yeah they
were public private partnership you got it great right right exactly and so you know kind of because
a lot of these projects require a lot of upfront capital cost um and you know it's very hard to
raise that kind of money in the private sector yeah um so being able to you know get support from
the government to be able to set up test reactors uh so at least you know test out the technology
um can really help because once you once you have those kinds of integrated um test
you know results and things like that like that can really help with um licensing your reactor
yeah so you know going through all the regulatory hurdles and yeah um so yeah it's definitely not an
easy thing to do and it's definitely very nuanced and um yeah i mean like i know i understand that
um like an example of china that got the ap 1000 the westin house reactor they got it but it was
not working anywhere like they were already building it in u.s. but it has not been completed i think in
the voktul site and somewhere still not completed yeah still not completed but but the chinese have
already bought this technology they already got it working in in china already without having to see
it working elsewhere so i think there is kind of um a future like if the people are very willing
they might be willing to take the risk and take the big jump or like the the the leap of faith if
my if i may say and like give it a good shot like if i'm if i may say if that's the the right word for
it so i think there is hope kind of yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i think so and i mean you know these types
of reactors um often there's hundreds of jobs uh that come with this type of reactor uh so that's another
you know hundreds of like very skilled high paying jobs right yeah so that's another kind of incentive
is that yeah very good so um lakshana it's quite interesting to talk with you and i'm very very
happy it's quite an interactive and amazing session with you i want to have some last words
from you so that we can call it a time in the session perhaps in the future we can have more
time with you or at this point i just want to ask you just two questions one i want to ask you
about the activate fellowship if you take people from outside the us uh i don't know about that
can you tell us if that applies for sure um so there's uh definitely applications are open
for people outside of the us the only stipulations are that you have to move to either boston or
berkeley or the duration of the fellowship um and then you know the fascinate that movement
uh we we do a we do have real patients stipend um so definitely we encourage people to i mean
okay that you know that's a very core part of the fellowship uh being in the same location as
everyone else okay and then having the the access to you know just making sure that you're able to
work in the us and work for your company like work for the company that you're spinning out
uh which are kind of very yeah technical minor details but you know that's good yeah so
uh i sincerely appreciate the answer to that question that brings me to the last one
um what are your last words like what do you want our listeners to know like what are your last words
any word you want to to give to those who are listening to us now
can you i just want to say you know thank you once again for for having me and you know i'm
really looking forward to learning more about uh the you know progress of nuclear technology
in in africa especially in nigeria um and um yeah and also you know please get in touch with me
if you have any other if you have any cool startup ideas or or if you would like some advice on
you know how to spin out the technology um i'm definitely happy to help with that type of um
that type of advice and thinking wow that's quite a generous offer from you thank you very
much Lakshana for the time with us and i sincerely appreciate and hope to speak with you one more
time and um i get to know more about you and what you do and um expand the frontiers of our
network thank you so much for being with us absolutely thank you so much jerry this was great