Hydrogen fuel start-up, a Coug love story, and healthy plant relationships

How do you take innovative research from the university lab to the public? Three Washington State University engineering researchers working on unique hydrogen fuel tanks, fueling stations, and other technology started their own company to move their findings into the commercial world. We spoke with two of the founders about the challenges of launching a business and the potential of green hydrogen fuel.

Also in this episode:

-          Two Cougs meet at a stoplight… A love story about a pair of Washington State University alumni in Austin, Texas, whose serendipitous connections led to marriage.

-          Plants and microbes can and do have healthy symbiotic relationships. Stephanie Porter, a microbiologist at WSU Vancouver, talks about her research into the important symbiosis of crops and other plants with organisms in the soil.

Read more about Porter’s symbiosis research, WSU alumni love stories, and hydrogen fuel research at Washington State University.

Transcript

Larry Clark:

How do you get research from the lab to the public? For Washington State University engineering researchers in the surging field of green hydrogen fuel, it took teamwork and patience.

                Welcome to Viewscapes, stories from Washington State Magazine, connecting you to Washington State University, the state and the world.

                Hi, I'm magazine editor, Larry Clark. In this episode, I talk with Ian Richardson and Eli Shoemake about The Protium Company, their startup that builds innovative tanks and filling stations for hydrogen fuel. In this episode, we also have a true WSU Coug love story and a conversation with WSU Vancouver microbiologist, Stephanie Porter, about symbiosis and positive relationships between microbes and plants.

                Green hydrogen fuel made from renewable energy, such as solar wind or hydropower, is rapidly taking its place among other sources to meet the world's energy needs. For the last decade, three alumni researchers at the Voiland College Of Engineering And Architecture were looking into ways to store, produce and use hydrogen fuel. Their work culminated in The Protium Company. I talked with two of the founders via Zoom about how they moved their ideas from the lab at WSU into the public.

Ian Richardson:

I'm Ian Richardson, I'm the CEO of The Protium Company.

Eli Shoemake:

And I'm Eli Shoemake and I am CCO or Chief Commercial Officer.

Larry Clark:

Can you tell me a little bit about Protium? What do you do and what is your company?

Ian Richardson:

Protium specializes in liquid hydrogen technologies. Our initial products that we're developing are a novel liquid hydrogen fuel tank and a fueling station to go with that. The initial application is looking at the aerospace industry. We're currently on a project with Washington State University to develop the first liquid hydrogen-powered drone that will be used for surveillance and reconnaissance. And that project is sponsored by the US army.

                So the third co-founder of Protium, Dr. Patrick Adam, actually developed a kind of novel tank configuration for storing liquid hydrogen during his graduate work. And so the idea behind this is that you have this liquid hydrogen tank, that we've incorporated heat exchangers into the walls of that tank. Something that's never been done before and hasn't existed until now. And we're actually 3D printing this tank out of a novel polymers, which had also never been done before. So this started this PhD project looking at the feasibility of this and we gained a lot of traction and interest from industry in this, so that led to starting up a company to commercialize this technology out of the lab.

Larry Clark:

That's pretty cool. It sounds like a great idea. Was the idea to commercialize there all long, build this technology, do this research and then get it out to the world where it can be used?

Eli Shoemake:

Yeah, it really kind of was. One of the unique things about this particular project is it really got sparked back in 2012 or so. The hydrogen lab was working on building a liquid hydrogen-powered drone for themselves. So at the time, I was a undergraduate at WSU and working with the aerospace club. We kind of helped with the lab to create this liquid hydrogen-powered drone. And it was really just kind of a fun idea, kind of pet project. It was something that people like the Navy and Boeing had been working on at the time. And we kind of said, hey, these big names are doing it. That's something that we can do. We have the expertise right here at WSU to do that same thing. Maybe not on the same scale, but we have liquid hygiene expertise. We have people that can do remote-controlled aircraft and know how to design aircraft from undergraduates to grad students. All right here.

                So we did. We went and we flew it a bunch of times. Unfortunately, we never were able to fly that particular aircraft on liquid hydrogen. But what it did do is it attracted the attention of a Boeing subsidiary in situ who got involved in the project. And so from day one with this tank technology, it was really them saying, "Hey, what you're doing is cool, but can you take the next step and give us a hydrogen solution that we can use that's better than everything else out there?" So really from day one, it was driven by a customer coming to the university and saying, "Can you develop us a solution?" And when that solution looked like it was working out, that was really, "Okay, we need to start up a company. We need to be able to commercialize this and turn it from the lab project than it is to something that we can actually end up supplying to Boeing in the end."

Ian Richardson:

And so when, when Eli and Patrick were working on this liquid hydrogen-powered aircraft at the time, I was actually in a totally different field working on fueling stations to help with the rollout of hydrogen-powered vehicles in California. So we had several different technologies we were working on that all had viable commercial opportunities. And so at some point, you realize, "Hey, we're really onto something. We spent years researching this. There's an actual application for this in the industry. This makes a lot of sense to start up a company and try to get this technology out into the world and start selling it." And ideally, that's every researcher's dream, right? You want to take your research from the lab to a commercial product that can go impact people's lives. And as graduate students, you'd rather make your own job than have to go find a job. If you can do that, so win-win for everybody and that's a big push.

                WSU is providing a lot more resources to make that happen in the last couple of years too. Because they realized that that's a big part of all the R&D that goes on in universities across the country. A lot of it doesn't get a lot of support to push it to the next level, to get it out in the industry and we need to. I mean, we have to provide funding and business advising and skills for researchers to start commercializing products.

Larry Clark:

Well, that kind of makes me wonder too. What challenges did you guys face as you were starting to commercialize?

Ian Richardson:

There's a lot of challenges with starting a company. First being engineers, we have no formal business training. Didn't really know how you legally form a company except for Googling it, get all the paperwork in place and then you legally have a company and high-five and cheer. And then, now what? So then it's the actual process of figuring out doing your customer discovering, figuring out what the actual needs are in the industry, understanding your customer base.

                The business side is just as challenging as the technology side. And I think that's what a lot of people don't realize starting new companies. They think I have this great idea. It's going to make a lot of money. I wish it was that simple, but it's been years of us going to business accelerators, talking with advisors, honing in on a business plan, something that's has long-term sustainability.

Eli Shoemake:

Yeah. Yeah, I think we were really fortunate in a lot of ways that we went through kind of the way we did. So the company was actually formed December 2014. So really, beginning of 2015 is when we were a company and we can start doing stuff. But we didn't really start pushing commercializing on this tank technology, for example, and really behaving like a real company until 2018. So those first three years there ... four years, it was really us teaching ourselves what we needed to know to behave as a company, operate as a business and understand kind of what we needed to do in order to move from lab researchers to people operating the business. And we were fortunate, but there are a couple of things.

                One that we had WSU's network and connections to get us engaged with business experience and expertise. A lot of people that WSUs entrepreneurship in business programs and helped to provide us with advice. We were lucky that WSU got selected as a NSF-funded I-Corps note and went through that I-Core program, which is invaluable to giving us a lot of experience and helping us form out our ideas and find who our customer was. All of these things.

                But the other thing, just the fact that we were still students I was a Master's student at WSU. Ian and Patrick were both pursuing their doctorates through a lot of that. So we could come in, we could be students during the day and have our worked done and then working on the business stuff after hours. It wasn't like we were sitting there needing to make an income or needing to have some other thing going or really needing this company to work out right now. It bought us the time to figure out what we were doing so that when we were ready, to go for it.

Larry Clark:

I've been doing a lot of reading about hydrogen as a fuel and the hydrogen economy. It seems to me, you guys might have the right thing for the right time. Hydrogen seems to be having a moment. So what do you think? Do you think the prospects are good for you?

Ian Richardson:

We hope so. It's taken a lot longer than we would have liked, but all the pieces are finally coming together. The technology is there. It's commercially viable. The costs are coming down as we start to manufacture more and more of these, whether that's fuel cells on consuming hydrogen, turning it into electricity for powering vehicles or electricity, or the electrolyzer side for generating your hydrogen, getting hydrogen from clean resources.

                Especially right now with a large renewable energy push and clean energy push, hydrogen is getting a lot of attention as an energy storage media. Right here in the Northwest and state of Washington, we're putting in one of the largest PEM electrolyzers from hydroelectric power in the country. So, that just got funded up in Douglas County. I think we're going to start seeing a lot more hydrogen vehicles in all aspects of our society.

Larry Clark:

Where do you see Protium going from here? What are your next steps?

Eli Shoemake:

This summer, we will be doing a flight test on the current WSU project that we're on. And from there, we're looking to expand larger-sized vehicles on aerospace applications. So air taxis, electric aircraft. And then also starting to look at Marine vessels too and how we can scale our technology to larger vehicles.

Larry Clark:

And so what advice would the two of you have for other researchers or other people that might be thinking about doing a startup?

Ian Richardson:

Don't be afraid to ask for help, tap into the resources that are available, take advantage of the network and the resources that your institution. Whether that's a university or other startup community, take advantage of those resources and learn as much as you can and get advice from as many people that are willing to get it. Because there's no one right path to start up a company. It's different for every single company, every industry, every technology.

Eli Shoemake:

Yeah, I think that's great advice. You surround yourself with good people and you'll end up going in the right direction. Find people that can help.

                Another thing is I would seriously say, if you want to go find people to help you get it along, I would not be able to do this by myself. And having Ian and Patrick along as co-founders, the three of us worked really well together. And I think it would be just a lot harder for even just any two of us to try to get it along. So find people that you like working with, get a good team together, don't be afraid to ask for help and then go for it. And it may or may not work out, but you'll never know until you try this.

Jessica Stafford Harper:

I'm a teacher and I had the summer off. I had gone to a early afternoon yoga class. I was coming back from yoga. And on my way home, I noticed a Tahoe in front of me that had a WSU trailer hitched.

Adriana Janovich:

I made Adriana Janovich, Associate Editor at Washington State Magazine. And I'm here with two Cougs who didn't meet at WSU, but WSU definitely did bring them together.

Jessica Stafford Harper:

My name is Jessica Stafford Harper. I graduated from Washington State University in 2003. I have a bachelor's degree in elementary education and I'm a seventh-grade teacher in Austin, Texas.

Joel Harper:

I'm Joel Harper. I graduated in '03 as a psychology major. I work at Apple. Yeah, so I was driving on 22-22. And it's this kind of scenic windy road and Austin is a very pretty drive. And I remember it being a summer day. I think my window was rolled up at the time, but just driving.

                And then I saw this car kind of zip-up behind me. And I was kind of looking in my rearview mirror. I'm like, "Huh, that car really close. Huh." And then it kind of zipped up beside me and kind of looked at me and I look over and I'm like, "Oh, this is a cute girl and she's looking at me. Wonder what's going on." And then she kind of zipped in front of me. And then I saw her Washington State sticker on her car. I'm like, "Oh, okay. Okay, so she went to Washington State."

                So we kept driving on 22-22. When we met, it just happened the light to be red. So we stopped. It was a minute later. We stopped and rolled down the windows and she's like, "You went to WSU?" I'm like, "Yeah, yeah. I'm from Pullman," which is a very small town. 10,000 people minus the students.

Jessica Stafford Harper:

I stopped, I kind of caught myself and I said, "You're from Pullman?" And I said, "I'm from Pullman too." And I had lived in Pullman. Both of us were born in Pullman. And my family lived in Pullman until I was in eighth grade and then we moved to Austin, Texas and I went back to school to WSU for college. I was really caught off-guard, but I didn't recognize him either. So without even thinking, I said, "Well, what is your name?" And he said, "Joel Harper." And again, without even thinking, I said, "Well, I've never heard of you."

Joel Harper:

Yeah, I mean, Pullman is so small, everybody kind of knows everybody. And especially the similar age, you would think you might've heard the name before. But yeah, she's like, "Jessica Stafford." I'm like, "Huh, I've never heard of you either."

Jessica Stafford Harper:

So then the light turned and we went on our way and I thought, "Huh, that's so interesting." It's funny that in just this quick encounter, I would meet someone who went to WSU but also was born in Pullman.

Joel Harper:

So I was a little bit older. I went to Whitworth first and then took a year off, then went back to Washington State and finished up. So there was a little bit of an age gap when we were younger, when she was still in Pullman, which kind of explains why our paths didn't cross at the time.

                But yeah, I remember the light is about to turn green and I got shy and the light turned green right before I was ready to ask for her number. And we're like, "Oh, okay, well then my gosh, I'll probably ..."

Jessica Stafford Harper:

Go Cougs.

Joel Harper:

Yeah, I'm like, "Oh no. I'll see this girl again." So I'm just like, "Jessica Stafford, Jessica Stafford, Jessica Stafford," and I said it over and over in my head. And then I drove to a friend's house and wrote it down. And then it was a few days later that I found her online and I'm like, "Oh, there she is."I was very excited.

Jessica Stafford Harper:

And the funny thing I think that we realize now is that throughout our lives, whether it was growing up in Pullman or being at WSU, there are many times that our paths probably crossed and we didn't know it. I have lots of friends who their big brothers are his friends. And we have lots of family moments that we remember being in the same place at the same time. When Joel moved to Austin, one of the first things he did was go to a WSU versus University of Texas baseball. I happened to be at that game with my dad. It was two years before we met, but it was just another one of those times that we were in the same place at the same time and didn't know it.

Joel Harper:

It's funny. We kind of talked about when she moved to Austin randomly, that's when Austin started to come up just in my radar for completely different reasons. I was just very drawn to Austin, the city and really moved there as quick as I could after college graduation. I had to find a job to move to Austin. But as soon as I did, I was just very excited to be here. And yeah, then to meet a Cougar in Austin was kind of one of those chance things, so that was pretty cool.

Adriana Janovich:

You found her online. Did you reach out first and then what happened next?

Joel Harper:

So I did. I reached out and found her. I'm like, "Hey, I'm the guy on 22-22."

Jessica Stafford Harper:

He actually invited me to go wave the flag at one of the WSU games, but I don't have a really good ... This isn't a good part of the story because I had a hair appointment that day and I asked, "How early do you have to get up to the wave the flag?" And he said, "Oh, we're to be up at 4:00 AM." I was like, "Nah, I think I'm good." So he did it. I did not. But that was one of our first conversation.

Joel Harper:

Yeah. It took a minute for us to kind of connect after that. It was maybe a year or so later that we actually got to meet for the first time.

Adriana Janovich:

How long did you date? And then how soon after that did you get married and all that?

Jessica Stafford Harper:

We dated for about two years and we were engaged for a year and then we've been married for almost 10 years. We'll be married 10 years in May. And it all went by really fast.

                I think I knew that he was the one the first time we went out to dinner. I just thought there was something really special about him and I felt like I'd known him my whole life. But at the same time, it was new and exciting. And I always feel very fortunate that I have someone in my life who loves Austin and loves Pullman equally and that both are very important to us. And there's so many things that we don't have to explain to each other. We just know. The uniqueness of Fullman and the uniqueness of WSU, we share that. And we had separate experiences, but definitely that same share of love.

Joel Harper:

Just inside stories and jokes. We knew teachers that we had or things like that. Different, small, unknown Pullman facts if you didn't grow up there, that we always have that home base point of reference.

Adriana Janovich:

Do you get back to Pullman or come back to the campus when it's not a pandemic?

Joel Harper:

So my parents still live in Pullman and most of my family is still in the northwest in Spokane or Coeur d'Alene areas. So we try to go back about every other year to see my folks. But yeah, this pandemic canceled our trip for a family reunion. We were pretty bummed about that but definitely excited to go back soon. And we have two young kids that they've been ... so they've got to ride on combines in the summer of Pullman and they got to experience that at a young age, but we're certainly excited to take them to some games as they get older and talk about where we're from which we're very proud of.

Adriana Janovich:

Do you guys still have the same cars, the same trailer hitch and that same sticker?

Jessica Stafford Harper:

We have since upgraded the cars. And I think it's funny. Neither one of us have WSU stickers currently on our cars. I don't know if it's because the rest is history. We don't need to meet anybody else from WSU. No, I'm just kidding. But I do laugh that I think that's a work in progress. We need to get something on our car to symbolize that moment.

Stephanie Porter:

I think that across many fields in science, one of the most exciting topics right now is understanding the impact of microbes on plants and animals.

Brian Clark:

That’s Stephanie Porter, a microbiologist at Washington State University Vancouver. Porter studies symbiosis, the association of two or more organisms. I'm Brian Clark. And Porter and her work are the focus of a feature story I wrote for the November 2020 issue of Washington State Magazine.

                Symbiosis is a big umbrella word. It spans all the way from straight-up parasitism to full-on mutualism. Porter wants us to stop thinking of microorganisms, bacteria, fungi, the proteus and even viruses as always being the bad guys. "Microbes," she says, "have a huge positive impact on plants and animals."

Stephanie Porter:

In particular, microbes that aren't just disease-causing pathogens, but microbes that regularly live in plants and animals and affect the physiology, the health and the behavior of plants and animals in ways that previously were unrecognized. And there's sort of been a renaissance in this field. Understanding the human microbiome has fundamentally changed how we view medicine. And similarly, understanding the plant microbiome is fundamentally changing how we try to grow crops and plants that we depend on for our food and how we raise animals for pets or for food.

                So there's this big theme in the field of biology around understanding the outsized impacts of these tiny, invisible little microbes that have their whole ecology within the host. And the outcome of these ecological interactions of these diverse microbial communities, we're understanding that the impacts are quite profound on their hosts. And if we truly want to understand things like medicine or agronomy, we need to start with the microbes and understand how that impacts all of these outcomes that we care about like health and food production.

                For me, understanding that process is fundamental to so many of our society's goals and is also just fascinating. We have wonderful new developments, technologically, that have allowed us to identify and to quantify the positions of these microbes on their hosts and that lets us finally track them. So now we can sequence the genomes of these microbial organisms. We can use metagenomic sequencing to get a sense of the diversity of microbes that are there, the kinds of functions they may perform and their relative abundance. And so this is just this huge frontier right now. And I think it's a very exciting field that there's much progress being made in.

Brian Clark:

Metagenomics is a way of sequencing the genomes of entire communities. You can take a drop of pond water like we did when we were kids. But instead of looking through a microscope to see who's there, you use genomics tools to determine who's living in that pond. One of the questions Porter and her lab group are trying to answer is why there are so many different kinds of microorganisms in that pond, in your gut or in the rhizome, the roots of a plant.

Stephanie Porter:

There could be so many different factors that develop diversity. And this is sort of one of the foundational mysteries in ecology is for any organism, what maintains diversity or any level of organization.

Brian Clark:

For bacteria, diversity is really weird because they can kick out bits of their genome into the environment. And if another bacteria comes along, it can grab that bit of genetic material and just incorporated into its own genome. It's like bacteria or this kind of superorganism capable of kitting itself out with the tools it needs for whatever environment it finds itself in. Serpentine soils are one of those environments. These are soils rich and heavy metals. Normally toxic to just about everything, but not, it turns out, to certain kinds of nitrogen-fixing bacteria called mesorhizobia.

Stephanie Porter:

Bacteria can exchange adaptations, the genes that confer tolerance to different environmental attributes. They can exchange them in ways that other organisms don't tend to because bacterial genomes are very fluid. So if one bacterium evolves as a set of genes that lets it live happily in heavy metals, it can just pass that particular gene to other bacteria. And then those bacteria may be able to have this similar amount of tolerance.

                It's just so fundamentally different from how mammals like us tend to evolve, where we rely on the slow process of mutations and natural selection, weeding out some variants of a gene versus another. I mean, humans don't have this capacity. And yet, it seems to be fundamentally important for bacterial adaptation.

Brian Clark:

I try to imagine what it must be like to be a bacterium, but I always end up mixing metaphors. It must be like living in a gene soup and the genes are like junk mail floating by. Most of it, you just ignore. But then, hey, there's a coupon for a free pizza grab that. Or maybe it's like free money just floating around and you grab whatever you need to be adaptive and useful. And once adapted, a bacterium can thrive on to reproduce many other ways.

                What all of this really makes me wonder is what if Darwin's Bulldogs were all wrong? What if it's not all about the survival of the fittest? What if the cooperationists have it right and mutualism and sharing really are the way to thrive?

Larry Clark:

To read more about Porter's symbiosis research, Coug love stories and hydrogen fuel, visit magazine.wsu.edu. Our music was composed by Greg Yasinitsky. Thanks for listening to Viewscapes.