Propel Dayton Entrepreneurs
Luis Estevez
Snapshot:
After spending his 20s helping run his family’s restaurant business into a successful endeavor, Luis Estevez left to obtain his degree in Mechanical Engineering and eventually, a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2013. At Cornell, Luis specialized in porous materials with imbedded nanoparticles for various applications and functionalities. Upon graduating, he then obtained a three year, 1-million-dollar fellowship from the Department of Energy to pursue his technology further at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He is currently working at the University of Dayton Research Institute while he attempts to transition his technology from the lab into the commercial space. To that effort he has founded his company, Advanced & Innovative Multifunctional Materials (AIMM), LLC.
Luis won the Early Risers Academy virtual pitch competition for its spring 2020 tech cohort. Held in conjunction with local startup advocacy and outreach group Launch Dayton, the 10-week pre-accelerator program helped a select group of inventors and engineers in and around Dayton, Ohio get a handle on all steps of getting a product to market.
Business Venture - AIMM:
AIMM's expertise is crafting high-tech materials for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and advanced filtration. These new safe, carbon-based materials allow for self-sterilizing N95 masks which can be great tools for fighting COVID-19. In addition to PPE, AIMM can use a similar process to fabricate materials that can be embedded with microbe-killing nano-materials to turn water with harmful pathogens into clean, good tasting drinking water—powered only by gravity.