ESD Ph.D. student’s start-up receives awards, funding

April 1, 2008

IntAct Labs LLC, the start up company of ESD Ph.D. student Matthew Silver recently received two awards.

As a semi-finalist in the MIT 100K business plan competition, IntAct secured a $1000 dollar semi-finalist prize.

In addition, IntAct was recently awarded an $80,000 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant by the United States Department of Agriculture and an SBIR from the National Science Foundation. The latter was turned down by IntAct due to overlapping scope with the USDA. The company is further supported by the French Foreign and Interior Ministries under the Young Entrepreneur's Initiative, and has received funding from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts

Matt co-founded IntAct Labs with current and former MIT students prior to starting his Ph.D. studies in the Engineering Systems Division. Other team members from the MIT community include Justin Buck (Ph.D. Candidate, Biological Engineering) and Noah Taylor (formerly Biological Engineering).

IntAct Labs is a technology development company with core expertise in metabolic engineering and complex systems integration. It is currently commercializing proprietary waste-to-energy solutions based on electrically active biofilms, in collaboration with research institutions in the United States and Europe.