Solistra’s core technology is a chemical reactor system that uses light to drive chemical reactions instead of heat, which is conventionally supplied by burning natural gas, and is very carbon-intensive. Using light has the added advantage that it can make chemical reactions involving greenhouse gases (like carbon dioxide and methane) easier by reducing the energy […]

One of the big setbacks Solistra suffered as a result of the sudden COVID-19 lockdown last March was a delay in the manufacture and deployment of our first scaled demonstration unit. Solistra’s core technology, a system that uses light to drive chemical reactions instead of heat, has the potential to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions […]

Upon spinning off Solistra from the Ozin lab at the University of Toronto, the main piece of advice from my advisors was that I needed to switch my mindset from “academic” thinking to “business” thinking. They indicated they had seen this in many graduate students trying to spin off companies from their graduate research, and […]

I was recently told that airing my past career challenges in a public blog post wasn’t “putting my best foot forward”. This is something I wholeheartedly have to disagree with… publicly, in a blog. In a program predicated on systemic change, I find it funny that challenging the social status quo is seen as detrimental, […]

I’ve often felt pulled in opposite directions. When finishing high school, I felt torn between studying music and engineering; and when planning where I would settle down, I fought between living in the bustle of downtown Toronto and disappearing into the spindly wilderness of northern Ontario. These are easy examples. In my work, this habit […]