EQT Foundation awards more than €1 Million in grants for next-generation critical minerals solutions

EQT Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of its Critical Minerals Science Grants program, awarding more than EUR 1 million in grants to researchers developing technologies that reduce reliance on constrained and strategically important raw materials in climate technologies. The selected projects span universities and research institutions across Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.

The funded projects tackle some of the most significant material bottlenecks facing the energy transition. The cohort includes technologies designed to recover lithium from seawater and industrial waste streams, recycle battery materials and rare earth elements, reduce iridium use in hydrogen electrolysers, and develop next-generation energy systems based on earth-abundant materials. Together, the projects aim to strengthen supply-chain resilience while supporting the long-term scalability of clean-energy technologies.

Cilia Holmes Indahl, CEO of EQT Foundation, commented: “The green transition has a materials problem. Too many clean technologies depend on a handful of critical minerals, mined under dangerous, exploitative conditions, often invisible to the consumers plugging in their electric cars. Supply chains are fragile, concentrated in too few places, and immature recycling practices mean most of these materials end up in landfill instead of back in the system. The researchers we’re backing are working on the hard science to change that, rethinking clean technologies from the ground up. At EQT Foundation, we believe supporting entrepreneurial scientists at the earliest stages will be critical to building the next generation of globally impactful climate and health technologies.”

Selected grantees include:

• Kiana Amini, The University of British Columbia (Canada): Developing an electrochemical platform to recover lithium from seawater while simultaneously enabling ocean-based carbon dioxide removal
• Bertrand Paviet-Salomon, CSEM (Switzerland): Advancing resource-light photovoltaic technologies designed to reduce material bottlenecks in solar energy systems
• Jonas Elsborg, Technical University of Denmark (Denmark): Building scalable manufacturing platforms for earth-abundant electrocatalysts used in green hydrogen production
• Rhiyaad Mohamed, University of Cape Town (South Africa): Developing ultra-low-iridium electrolyser anodes to enable more scalable and affordable green hydrogen deployment
• Weiran Zhang, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore): Creating transition-metal-free battery chemistries based on silicon and lithium-salt systems
• Xiaochu Wei, Imperial College London (United Kingdom): Developing electrochemical recycling technologies that recover high-purity battery materials from end-of-life cells
• Xiao Su, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (United States): Advancing electrochemical technologies for rare-earth element recovery and recycling
• Juchen Guo, University of California Riverside (United States): Developing a novel chloroaluminate-based process for lithium-ion battery recycling
• Adrian Oehmen, University of Queensland (Australia): Creating bio-integrated technologies to recover lithium and rare earth elements from industrial waste streams
• André Studart, ETH Zurich (Switzerland): Using microorganisms to recover rare earth elements from urban waste sources
• Sajid Alvi, Chalmers Next Labs (Sweden): Engineering silicon anode materials for resilient and low-carbon lithium-ion batteries

The grants are part of EQT Foundation’s broader Science program, which supports entrepreneurial scientists working on breakthrough climate and health solutions at the earliest stages of development. In addition to funding, grantees receive access to commercialization support and EQT’s global network to help accelerate the path from scientific discovery to real-world impact. The program is designed to help more high-potential scientific breakthroughs progress beyond academia and toward scalable deployment.
 

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