Megan O’Connor, a 2018 fellow of ORNL’s Innovation Crossroads, who received AMMTO’s Commercialization Award.
O’Connor is co-founder and CEO of Nth Cycle, a metal refining company working with scrap recyclers, manufacturers and miners to recover production-grade critical metals from industrial scrap, low-grade ore and refining waste.
The company uses a patented electro-extraction technology that enables customizable, clean and consistent recovery of the critical metals for energy transition. The technology is designed to reduce the cost, footprint and environmental impact of producing recycled metals that have the same composition and performance as newly mined minerals, with one-tenth the energy input.
O’Connor led the company to commercialization in six years.
After completing ORNL’s Innovation Crossroads program — a two-year, lab-embedded program for fellows focusing on energy and advanced manufacturing technologies — O’Connor was named to the energy list for Forbes 30 Under 30. She was also named to the 2022 Grist50 list which identifies emerging leaders in climate, equity and sustainability. Most recently, TIME named O’Connor as one of its 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders in Business for 2024.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit https://energy.gov/science. — Tina Johnson
This Oak Ridge National Laboratory news article "Jansone-Popova, Peter and O’Connor receive AMMTO manufacturing innovation awards" was originally found on https://www.ornl.gov/news
