Technology-to-Market Summer Scholar Program (Summer 2025)
Background
The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Energy that funds creative, out-of-the-box, transformational energy technologies that are too early-stage for private investment. ARPA-E programs provide top energy researchers with funding, technical assistance, and tech-to-market guidance to radically improve U.S. energy security, energy efficiency, and environmental well-being. The driving question behind all ARPA-E programs is, “If it works, will it matter?”
ARPA-E recruits summer scholars who have a unique combination of technical and business skills to assist in defining commercialization pathways for high-impact technology development programs. This internship opportunity offers experience in advancing the transition of cutting-edge energy technologies to market applications in a fast-paced environment.
Opportunity
ARPA-E’s Summer Scholars Program is designed to prepare ARPA-E funded technologies to achieve maximum impact and return on investment for ARPA-E project teams, stakeholders, and our Nation’s taxpayers. This internship provides a unique opportunity to work under and interface with the ARPA-E Technology-to-Market team, the ARPA-E Program Directors, and ARPA-E Fellows. We are seeking graduate students interested in:
- Researching market trends, cross-industry collaboration opportunities, and go-to-market strategies
- Assisting in developing techno-economic analysis
- Performing stakeholder analysis to identify technology adopters and laggards
- Ecosystem mapping of key and relevant sectors within ARPA-E’s whitespaces
- Identify and design frameworks and quantify associated metrics to support program development and performers success.
Planned Projects:
- Development of ARPA-E Projects to Support Sustainable Maritime Grand Challenge
- Geologic Hydrogen US Supply and Demand Analysis
- Evaluate and Map Landscape of Data Center Power Demand
- Assess Climate Impacts of ARPA-E Program Sectors
- Investment Capital Analysis: Fusion Focus
- T2M Commercialization Efforts and Measured Impact
- Commercialization Pathways and Measures for ARPA-E Performers
- Mapping Market Gaps within the Energy Sector
- Commercialization Support for ARPA-E Program Grads
- Mapping the Climate Tech Ecosystem
- General.
Applicants should be prepared for deep immersion into the project and must be comfortable working independently. Job requirements include strong analytical, written, and oral communication abilities.
The ideal candidate(s) will have a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field (e.g., electrical engineering, physics, material science, agriculture, economics, computer science, etc.) and be in the midst of completing a graduate level degree (i.e. M.S. or MBA) or in the process of completing a PhD.
Selected Summer Scholar(s) will be paid a weekly stipend and travel costs; typical length of stay ranges from 8-12 weeks. The position is based at ARPA-E’s headquarters in Washington, DC. This opportunity is available only to U.S. citizens.
How to Apply
Highly motivated candidates should submit a CV, a cover letter, and two references at
https://arpa-e.energy.gov/career/job-opportunities.
Please note: If you are interested in more than one proposed project, please indicate in the body of your cover letter the specific projects you are interested in pursuing. A description of the individual projects is provided as a supplement to the job posting on the ARPA-E website located here: https://arpa-e.energy.gov/career/job-opportunities
Questions can be directed via email to ARPA-E-jobs@hq.doe.gov with the words “Energy Scholars” in the subject heading.
The United States Government does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factor.
Applications are due no later than Tuesday, December 31, 2024, and will be reviewed on a rolling schedule. Interested parties are encouraged to apply early.
Project Descriptions
Development of ARPA-E Projects to Support Sustainable Maritime Grand Challenge
The Department of Transportation and Department of Energy will soon release the US Maritime Decarbonization Action Plan to include a Sustainable Maritime Grand Challenge intended to accelerate scaleup and integration of sustainable fuels and energy technologies. Additionally, the US Maritime Administration just announced a Maritime Innovation Center to promote research, development, and deployment of emerging marine technologies. ARPA-E’s portfolio includes tens to hundreds of transformative technologies applicable to maritime platforms ranging from sustainable fuels to advanced nuclear power. The Summar Scholar’s analysis and recommendations would guide future Tech-to-Market priorities and potentially inform development of a future ARPA-E program. There are opportunities to transition ARPA-E technologies to maritime platforms via the Maritime Innovation Center.
The Summer Scholar would:
- Review priorities of the Maritime Decarbonization Action Plan
- Assess technologies within the ARPA-E portfolio, and recommend projects, collaboration, resourcing, and transition pathways for projects best aligned to the ARPA-E mission
- Identify potential commercialization pathways for ARPA-E projects while furthering the development of the technologies within the energy ecosystem.
Geologic Hydrogen US Supply and Demand Analysis
Geologic hydrogen is a new resource that is gaining increasing attention within the energy industry. ARPA-E has pioneered the US efforts in this field, primarily on the supply side. The goal of this project is to map the main industrial complexes that presently utilize hydrogen (e.g. petrochemicals, ammonia, …) and those that could decarbonize by adopting H2 (e.g. steel-making, transportation, …) as well as interconnecting/distribution modes. This will provide the foundation for a temporal and spatial understanding of hydrogen demand. Thus this summer project together with our on-going projects will create important resources to fully address the benefits and opportunities for a hydrogen economy in the US.
Outcomes of this effort will lead to:
- Development of the geologic hydrogen ecosystem
- Follow on development work of the TEA tool for the geologic hydrogen pipeline
- Market analysis (SAM, TAM, etc.) for the potential of geologic hydrogen.
Evaluate and Map Landscape of Data Center Power Demand
The Summer Scholar will explore the sector of data centers and the associated power demand to determine the landscape of power needs for data centers.
The Scholar should be able to:
- Establish and categorize estimates for emerging data center power demands
- Understand the nature of power needs for traditional data centers and emerging AI loads
- Catalog options and challenges for power and delivery (nuclear, renewables, gas, extending life of legacy power plants, reconductoring, etc.)
- Document and research regulation, construction timelines, geography-specific needs and community concerns
- Map the ecosystem landscape and report on major efforts and startups confronting these challenges
- Analysis of historical projects for data center load requirements and comparison for future projections (accounting for energy efficiency improvements).
Assess Climate Impacts of ARPA-E Program Sectors
The summer scholar would be tasked to use the En-ROADS online simulator, developed by Climate Interactive, the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, and Ventana Systems. The simulator shows the impacts of user-provided assumptions about specific climate solutions (e.g., transport electrification, carbon pricing, improved ag practices). It is a system dynamics model grounded in best available science, and calibrated against existing integrated assessment, climate, and energy models.
The outcomes of this project are:
- Determine historical and ongoing impacts of proposed technologies based on the identified sector
- Identify new whitespaces or program areas that have highest impact in reduction of emissions and emissions avoided
- Determine a way to measure program impact and use as potential KPI for ARPA-E’s KPIs for programs and performers (may differ for enabling technologies)
- Develop a framework and tool based on KPIs so this can be leveraged and repurposed for future programs.
Investment Capital Analysis: Fusion Focus
Understanding the capital investments in specific target areas are critical to helping ARPA-E’s performers successfully commercialize once they reach their targeted TRL. The Summer Scholar will work on developing a framework and a tool that would help evaluate investment capital analysis within the area of nuclear fusion. The framework should be repeatable for other parts of the energy sector and enable a creation of a tool that can be used to evaluate investment capital readiness.
The Summer Scholar will support the following activities:
- Evaluate and map investor capital landscape for nuclear fusion
- Assess and determine previous characteristics for success for awardees within nuclear fusion (investor types, stage at which capital was received, company evaluation, etc.)
- Develop a framework that can be used to analyze investment capital and associated readiness based on market potential and opportunities
- Explore and report on financial engineering strategies that can be used to make fusion investments risk-appropriate for multi-billion dollar deals from institutional investors and other large-scale funds.
T2M Commercialization Efforts and Measured Impact
The ARPA-E Technology-to-Market (T2M) team, established in 2012, has evolved to offer commercialization support to performers across various areas, including techno-economic analysis, value proposition development, overcoming supply chain and manufacturing challenges, and facilitating connections with potential customers and investors. This project seeks to identify which programs had the greatest impact by interviewing past performers (“graduated” from the ARPA-E programs). The Scholar will be responsible for identifying the metrics for success/impact across the expected baseline of the program and measuring/comparing with the outcomes of the performers in the program. Developing this framework and getting buy in from past performers, PDs, and T2M advisors will be critical to ensure that the appropriate factors are identified. The goal is to assess what has worked well, identify areas for improvement, and provide recommendations for enhancing the effectiveness of ARPA-E T2M Advisors and the programs in the future.
The project will result in:
- Defining a framework and key metrics for impact and commercialization success.
- Quantifying key near- and long-term T2M impact metrics for past performers
- Identifying successful commercialization strategies to be implemented in ongoing programs.
Commercialization Pathways and Measures for ARPA-E Performers
The ARPA-E SCALEUP Program serves as a catalyst for the commercialization of selected hardtech technologies previously funded by ARPA-E. The Summer Scholar will focus on enhancing the ability to guide ARPA-E Performers to their next step in their commercialization journey, as well as inform decisions on readiness for the ARPA-E SCALEUP program. There are multiple paths to commercialization for ARPA-E Performers which can differ based on the solution or product offered and the targeted industry for adoption; not all of these paths will intersect with the SCALEUP program. The Summer Scholar would be expected to analyze the journey of past & present SCALEUP cohorts to characterize and codify key performance indicators (KPIs) linked to their current progress versus their original expectations. In addition, the Summer Scholar is expected to conduct outreach with the broader hard tech commercialization ecosystem to further enhance recommendations for KPIs by solution type and industry. Outreach would include contacting DOE departments/agencies (applied, demonstration & deployment), investment ventures (e.g., BEV, RMI, etc.) and CVCs.
The expected outcomes of this effort will be:
- Development of the hardtech commercialization landscape that is categorized by sector
- Historical analysis of SCALEUP cohorts to determine KPI follow through based on solution type and industry.
Mapping Market Gaps within the Energy Sector
The climate technologies that have scaled up most rapidly are those that have been able to respond to an urgent and pressing customer need. Thus, it is important to better understand the pain points and highest willingness to pay attention to areas of customer incumbents. Through interviews with CVCs, innovation, and sustainability teams across a broad range of relevant sectors (utilities, hyperscalers, O&G, mining, etc) this summer scholar will aim to:
- Summarize the key interests, metrics and targets of each sector and the leading corporates for each sector
- Better match technologies from the ARPA-E portfolio to where the biggest needs are
- Identify white spaces where we could play a role in bolstering more innovation
- Determine market potential for identified white spaces by calculating market size and projected growth in the top/up to three area (s)
- Evaluate and map existing resources, facilities, and overall ecosystem that exists within the identified area(s).
This is an excellent opportunity for a summer scholar to connect with a diverse group of corporate stakeholders and quickly get up to speed on our broad portfolio at ARPA-E.
Commercialization Support for ARPA-E Program Grads
ARPA-E has funded over 1500 high-risk, high-reward technology development projects. In the journey to scaling up impactful clean energy technologies, the connections and commercialization strategy support that ARPA-E technology to market advisors provide can be very impactful. ARPA-E measures its impact using indicators like follow-on funding, number of patents, number of technology licenses, and number of startups formed. Anecdotally, ARPA-E technology to market advisors have continued to catalyze significant impacts for ARPA-E program graduates long after project closeout. However, as technology to market advisors and teams cycle out of ARPA-E, these alumnae connections and the associated opportunities to catalyze impact diminish.
The outcomes of this project will be:
- Research to determine the value and impact of supporting an alumni network; what are proven alternate ways to ensure alumni can surmount the second valley of death?
- Evaluation of existing external accelerators and incubators and determine their alumni support
strategies for ARPA-E to adopt
- Investigate options for the ARPA-E technology to market team to stay connected with the ARPA-E alumnae for whom continued support can be most impactful (he types of team, connection, and commercialization support that lead to the highest impact).
- Propose a strategy and methodology for providing continued commercialization support to ARPA-E alumnae teams for whom continued support will have a transformational impact.
Mapping the Climate Tech Ecosystem
The summer scholar would be tasked with mapping the climate tech investor landscape, including details of their investment strategy such as portfolio objectives, preferred growth stage, expected returns, time horizons, etc. Research would include interviews with investors as well as building on the work of the catalytic portfolio analysis that has been previously completed. To support the mapping of the investor landscape, there should be a framework developed to determine regional mapping of critical organizations and facilities with capabilities and interest in supporting hardtech scaleup activities, e.g., engineering design, testing, pilot construction, materials manufacturing, etc.
Outcomes:
- Facilitates easy future access for ARPA-E teams to identify best investor candidates and pathways for performers
- Provides quick overview of scaleup options to support performers that have reached the relevant growth stage.
General
The Summer Scholar would be tasked to support an emerging topic prior to the start of their internship. The work may involve financial analysis, market research, technoeconomic analysis, model development, internal frameworks and tools, and many other outputs as the T2M team needs requires. This category would be targeted for those Scholars who don’t have a particular focus but are open to more of the topics and areas that ARPA-E is involved with in a general basis to support ARPA-E’s mission.