Executive summary:
Seonghoon Woo
Before Amogy
- Forbes 30 under 30 Asia in Science
- Young Scientist Award (Presidential Award) which was issued by the Korean Academy
of Science and Technology - Published more than 25 articles related to spintronics in highly prestigious scientific
journals; including Nature Materials 15, 501-506 (2016); Nature Physics 13, 448-454
(2017); Nature Communications 8, 15573 (2017); Nature Electronics 1, 288-296 (2018);
Nature Communications 9, 959 (2018); Nature Electronics 3, 148-155 (2020)
After Amogy
- Co-Founded the company that develops sustainability technology converting ammonia
to power - Led the company’s initial technology development and early deployment in mobility
applications, including first-ever ammonia-powered zero emission drone (August 2021) &
tractor (May 2022). - Led three fundraising of the company to date. $3M Seed, $20M Series-A and $46M
Corporate rounds, funded by global investors including e-commerce giant Amazon,
through the retailer’s $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund, the world’s largest oil producer
Saudi Aramco, and the South Korean energy conglomerate SK. - Built all aspects of the company operations, from finance to HR and day-to-day
operations platforms. - Built all aspects business development including market research, customer
engagements and partnerships
What is your field of expertise?
I studied solid-state physics at MIT and received a PhD degree in a subject called spin-electronics, which explores the low power operation of conventional electronics using the spin of electrons. I then worked in the semiconductor industry for the following 5-6 years, until founding Amogy with other co-founders in the beginning of 2021.
Describe your journey to where you are today.
I have been trained as an engineer throughout my academic and professional careers. I went to
a college in South Korea called POSTECH, and then earned a PhD degree in Materials Science
and Engineering from MIT.
My professional expertise was also about solving the energy problem, but in the nano-scale
where I explored the novel way of reducing the power consumption in the micro/nano chips that
are commonly used for modern computations. However, I always had a great interest in other
“macro-scale” energy issues beyond my expertise, where I closely followed up for the last few
years, and decided to co-found a company working directly in solving such problems.
What does your company do, for whom, and how does it fit into the bigger picture of solving global issues with clean tech?
Amogy is building a zero-emission ammonia-to-power system that uses ammonia as a sustainable fuel. We have developed a compact, highly efficient chemical reactor that can crack ammonia into hydrogen. Eliminating the need for intermediate storage, hydrogen is then immediately sent through a fuel cell. This proprietary design leverages the superior physical characteristics of liquid ammonia to carry the performance advantages of hydrogen far from the supply source at lower operating temperatures and higher efficiency levels than other alternative power systems. We aim to use our technology to decarbonize challenging sectors like maritime shipping, where the high energy-density liquid fuels are necessary.
Some of the work we have done on our way to decarbonize such commercial vehicles are demonstrations displaying our technology in use. For example, we have demonstrated successfully on an aerial drone as well as the first-ever ammonia-powered zero-emissions tractor with plans to showcase more in the near future. Additionally, we announced the opening of our Norway office in Stavanger to help expand our efforts globally. With its advanced ammonia infrastructure and commitment to decarbonizing global shipping, Norway provides abundant opportunity for commercialization of Amogy’s ammonia-to-power technology.
What do you think is the most important thing we can be doing in terms of clean tech solutions?
It is every human on earth’s responsibility to care about the environment and our planet but there are many people that hold positions that have a lot more influence on what can be done. For example, political leaders across the world need to implement more policy to make clean technology solutions more easily achievable, accessible and incentivized so more people can be involved. Business owners should continue to present and progress cleantech solutions and as we see a general shift in policy and money go towards these solutions, we will see more impactful solutions.
LinkedIn: Seonghoon Woo