When Marissa Beatty, a 2017 graduate in chemical engineering, looks back at what she gained from her MSU education, she recalls how critical her work was in helping communities far from home. Her research was focused on developing electrochemical sensors in a way to ensure rural farmers in India weren’t exposed to harmful nerve agents in fertilizer.
“I see an engineer as being a liaison between the public and the cutting edge of science,” Beatty says. “We're building solutions that go into the public space. And I was just really inspired by that.”
Today, she’s applying her engineering experience to a thornier problem that will benefit an entire sector this time around: In 2022, Beatty founded Turnover Labs, which seeks to shift the chemical industry away from its reliance on petroleum-based chemical building blocks by providing carbon-neutral alternatives born out of CO2 and renewable electricity.
Funded at first with a $100,000 grant from a New York City fellowship, and then backed by climate-focused investors, Turnover Labs is still fine-tuning its prototype but has already attracted impressive media attention: Beatty was named to the 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Read more in an alumni feature in Spartan Magazine: Sweating the Nano Stuff.