September 16, 2021

During the Summer 2021, Chenxin Xu served as an intern for Traffic21/Mobility21 and the Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation (CTTEC).  She is a dual degree student at CMU seeking masters degrees in Engineering & Technology Innovation Management  and in Mechanical Engineering.  Chenxin collaborated with two other interns at CTTEC supported by the CMU Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, bringing a range of skills, training and experiences to their projects for CMU startup efforts.

The two Traffic21/Mobility21 supported startup projects that Chenxin worked on were:

• Phlux Technologies: Phlux Technologies is a spinout company from CMU’s Robotics Institute from the lab of Professor Srinivasa Narasimhan, led by PhD graduate Joe Bartels.  They are developing technology to enable mobile and stationary robots to scan their environment to detect risks to humans and to the robots.  In one application, their systems could be applicable as a replacement for LIDAR on autonomous vehicles.  The intern conducted customer discovery interviews to help to segment market opportunities and to identify market entry and partnering strategies.
• Oxide Enterprises: Oxide Enterprises is a pre-company project from CMU’s Materials Science and Engineering Department, from the lab of Professor Lisa Porter, led by PhD graduate Luke Lyle.  They are developing materials and methods of manufacture to make power electronics devices in electric vehicles more energy efficient and lighter weight.  The intern conducted secondary market research and customer discovery interviews to help to identify how the startup could best enter the EV value chain in their go-to-market strategy.  Further, the intern built a production cost estimation model, using techniques taught in the E&TIM program, to give insight into the expected unit costs based on various assumptions of scale of manufacturing and production techniques.

Joe & Luke have been working for the past year as Swartz Innovation Fellows  in collaboration with Mobility21 to commercialize their technology.