Alumni profile: Kirsten Van Fossen, S.B. '12

We need carbon for everything. It’s  critical for fuel, but it also has applications in construction, manufacturing, even textiles.

Literally billions of tons of carbon sit in our atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide (CO₂), contributing to rising global temperatures and just waiting to be converted into something useful. 

What if CO₂ could be taken out of the atmosphere, and converted into fuel? Kirsten Van Fossen, S.B. ‘12, is trying to answer that question. She’s a postdoctoral research fellow at the Magda Barecka Lab at Northeastern University, where they’re using electrochemistry to convert CO₂ into ethanol, an intermediary in the synthesis of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

“There’s a lot of discussion around decarbonization, but more accurately this technology should be considered ‘defossilization,’” said van Fossen. “This is really a technology that can move us away from the reliance on fossil fuels as a source of carbon.”

Van Fossen’s research is the culmination of the last 15-plus years of her life, going all the way back to her time as an environmental science and engineering concentrator at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). It taps into the lessons she learned about sustainability, entrepreneurship and tech commercialization as a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. and then as a department head at the foodservice data start-up Galley. And it draws on her government work with the U.S. Department of Transportation, where she was part of the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center and worked on SAF and alternative aviation fuel projects over a decade ago.

“I just feel like it’s all coming together in this opportunity working with the Barecka Lab,” she said. “I’m very drawn to the world of start-ups, building things from scratch.” 

FROM BOATING TO BRAZIL

A national-caliber rower as a high school student in New Jersey, Van Fossen chose Harvard in part because of the appeal of rowing on the Charles River every day. While always planning to study engineering, she didn’t know which discipline before she got here.

“I understood that at Harvard, I could explore multiple disciplines,” she said. “Engineering was a good fit for me. It combined my passion for math and science, my love for working in a team, and gave me plenty of hands-on experience. At Harvard I became aware of the issues of climate change, the urgency, and I saw environmental engineering as the discipline that would set me up for having the most impact.”

A SEAS class on environmental chemistry and an MIT class in which she built a light sensor for a device that concentrates solar energy were some of the early experiences that convinced van Fossen that environmental engineering was the right choice. But it was her senior thesis that would prove life-changing. She designed an electrochemical filter for drinking water, and while in the lab was introduced to a visiting professor from the Universidade de São Paulo. After graduating, that professor invited her to continue her research and work on a water reuse and recycling project with him in Brazil.

“In my work in Brazil, I visited a lot of industrial sites,” she said. “That’s also what I was around as a child. My father worked at a small business called Van-Air & Hydraulics, and I remember visiting the workshop there. It was in Brazil where I started thinking about applying to graduate school.”

START-UPS AND SUSTAINABILITY

Seeing how Brazilian companies managed water and other resources inspired Van Fossen to dive deeper into the world of sustainable industry and entrepreneurship. In the fall of 2014, she began her Ph.D. in industrial management at Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing.

“In my Ph.D., I studied start-ups encouraging healthier, more sustainable food consumption,” she said. “I was exposed to lots of different start-ups, pitched some start-up ideas myself while I was working on my Ph.D., and I kind of caught the start-up bug.”

Within a month of finishing her Ph.D. in late 2018, Van Fossen joined Galley as Head of Customer Success. Working there for over four years, she eventually transitioned to Head of Sustainability and Education at the company, whose platform offered a range of foodservice data solutions, including inventory management, menu planning, nutritional analysis and aspirations to decrease food waste and increase sustainable food practices. When the company decided to withdraw focus on those aspirations, Kirsten moved on.

“I joined Galley as the seventh employee. In my tenure there, we grew to over a hundred people working at the organization,” she said. “I saw what it looks like for a start-up to grow rapidly, and what it takes to build up a company.”

NEW USES FOR CO₂

Van Fossen has been at the Barecka Lab since November 2024. Her research draws on not only the hard science of her undergraduate days, but also the industry and entrepreneurial experiences she’s had since then. One of her major focus areas is the eventual commercialization of this technology, as well the market for other potential products that could be synthesized with the Barecka Lab’s patented technology. The lab is partially funded from a grant from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, with a goal of bringing the air-to-ethanol technology to market.

“I love that I can draw on that hard science background that I got from Harvard. The math, chemistry, physics that I got to study in engineering, it’s all so beautiful and practical,” she said. “With the core curriculum, I got the base that I needed to navigate lots of different work contexts. I’ve had federal government experience, academic experience, start-up experience, and I really think that base came from the work I did at Harvard.”

The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.