Ann Arbor’s Algal Scientific doubles staff, wins award

A little over a year ago Algal Scientific was a project for four students at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. With it they won the U-M/DTE Energy Clean Energy Prize. Today that project is now a company that employs the four student founders… and then some.The start-up, based in the Michigan Life Science and Innovation Center, took the $65,000 from the Clean Energy Price and another $50,000 from the Michigan Microloan Fund Program to create a staff of nine people.”In general we have staffed up in a number of areas,” says Paul Hurst, CEO of Algal Scientific. Algal Scientific is working on a waste-water treatment system that uses algae to remove nutrients from contaminated water leaving the raw materials for biofuels. Earlier this summer the company set up a pilot system in a waste-water treatment plant and expects to set up a couple more within a few months.”It’s much larger,” says Geoff Horst, CSO of Algal Scientific. “We’re dealing with hundreds of gallons instead of dozens of gallons in the lab.”The company expects to establish a demonstration scale project within the year and start generating revenue. It plans to continue hiring during this time, too. Algal Scientific also won the CleanTech Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering’s Energy and Environmental Technology Applications Center and New York New Energy earlier this month.Source: Paul Hurst, CEO of Algal Scientific and Geoff Horst, CSO of Algal ScientificWriter: Jon Zemke