Antora Insider: A Q&A with Dustin Nizamian, Lead R&D Infrastructure Engineer
Antora converts low-cost, intermittent renewable electricity into a reliable, on-demand source of zero-emissions industrial heat and power.
Antora’s co-founders started with a single question: how could they make the biggest positive impact on climate change? They took a problem-first approach, evaluating every possible way to store energy to find a solution to the intermittency of wind and solar. After spending months running the numbers, it became clear that thermal energy storage was the clear winner on purely economic terms: it’s cheap, simple, and nearly infinitely scalable using earth-abundant materials.
Behind Antora’s technology is a dynamic, world-class team of engineers and leaders, which we’ll highlight in this series. Today we highlight Lead R&D Infrastructure Engineer Dustin Nizamian. Dustin joined Antora shortly after the company’s founding, in search of a role with the largest potential impact on global carbon emissions. In his 4 years at Antora, Dustin helped bring Antora’s thermal battery from design to full-scale operation.
Can you tell us a bit about your role at Antora Energy?
As Antora’s Lead R&D Infrastructure Engineer, I’m responsible for testing Antora’s thermal battery systems and leading the development of the equipment that enables that testing. In my previous role as thermal systems engineer, I focused on the design of the thermal battery: essentially everything that’s required to heat up the thermal storage media and deliver that stored heat for days on end.
I came in with a test engineering background. I had done a lot of experimental work with high temperature materials in fuel cells and concentrated solar applications. But naturally at a startup, I’ve worn a lot of different hats. Early on, I was involved in the conceptual testing of our thermophotovoltaic (TPV) power-to-heat technology, proving the conversion efficiency of small-scale TPV cells. Over time, I gradually shifted to the thermal storage side. During the last 18 months, I’ve been involved with the end-to-end design and buildout of our thermal battery system and the commissioning of our first demonstration site.
With this role, what does a typical day look for you?
It’s anything from assembling components at our demonstration plant to scoping out new test equipment that we can use in the lab. There’s a very hands-on aspect to the work, which I love.
Beyond the day-to-day, working at a small company really forces you to always be looking ahead. It’s questions like: How can we get new test equipment? Where can we find new vendors for our various materials and equipment? What new capabilities can we add to the team?
Can you tell us a little more about your background and what brought you into climate tech?
When I was 11 or 12, I remember watching Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth. I remember how urgent the problem seemed and my naive assumption was that the world would get right to fixing it. By the time I was in college, I’d learned a little more about just how big of a challenge it is to decarbonize the world, and I figured I could find a career that helped.
When I was in college, I was lucky enough to find a job at a fuel cell company, first as an intern and then as a full-time test engineer. The technology was fascinating and I learned a lot about how to be an engineer, but after a few years I started to feel a bit pigeon-holed and I wanted to find something with a bigger immediate impact on emissions. I decided to go to grad school to broaden my horizons, and ended up doing a Master’s in Energy Science at ETH Zurich, researching concentrated solar power. But once again, I was looking to have more of a direct impact, so when it came time to apply for PhD programs, I was back in search of a new technology.
That’s when I encountered Antora. It seemed wild to blow up my plans in academia to join a five-person startup back in California, but from my first emails with Andrew, I couldn’t shake the notion that they were really onto something. The more I learned about Antora’s technology, the more I saw its enormous potential, and how immediate it could be. Within a few months of joining, I knew that this was what I wanted to be doing. I’d found the impact I was looking for.
What are some professional accomplishments that you’re most proud of?
The most motivating thing for me is for my work to actually have an impact, to make a dent in this giant problem of climate change. I feel incredibly proud to have been involved in the early TPV efficiency testing when Antora’s cells smashed a world record at the time, with more than 40% heat-to-electricity conversion in a solid-state device. That’s just a phenomenal achievement for science, and it was a huge privilege to be involved at any level.
I’m also really proud of helping Antora go from a concept drawing on a piece of paper to a built and operational demonstration plant. I’d never gotten to have that much continuity with a project before, let alone one of this magnitude. To see all that come together, and actually work, has been absolutely incredible.
What advice do you have for someone looking to build a career in climate tech?
Be intentional with what you want. If you’re a student, try to think about what you want to accomplish with your career, get involved in research, make connections with professors, and find internships and other opportunities to make it happen. Don’t go work on a technology just because it looks cool or because there are a lot of big-name startups working on it. If you want to have an impact on climate change, do the napkin math and see what pencils out.
Find a position that makes sense to you, and make sure what you’re working on can actually make a difference. If you are clear on your goals and find organizations that align with them, it will work out. There are so many opportunities to have an impact on issues you care about — it just takes some digging.
What makes you passionate about Antora’s mission and the tech you’re working on?
The talk about the mission isn’t BS here. People really are focused on stopping climate change, whatever it takes and without any bias towards anyone’s favorite technology.
It goes back to the earliest days of the company, when the founders started from a technology-agnostic approach to figure out how to best solve the intermittency challenge of renewable energy. That problem-first approach is actually pretty rare. A lot of startups spin out of labs or other companies with a specific solution in mind, and that can tend to lock them into a narrow way of thinking about the problem.
Antora’s founders created a tight-knit environment from the start, where everyone on the team cares deeply about the mission and because of that, we all derive a lot of joy out of this work. At this stage, we’ve been through all sorts of challenges together — we’ve made it through a global pandemic, big economic swings, all kinds of acts of God — but through it all, the notion that we do what we do to stop climate change hasn’t wavered, and that’s been powerful.
What do you like to do outside of work?
I love to travel. As a kid I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time in Hong Kong and I got totally spoiled in grad school while living in Europe. Honestly, I think a career in clean energy was the only way I could atone for all those air travel emissions. I recently started surfing. I’m still pretty bad, I’m about a year in and I can finally stand up on some waves, but I’ve been enjoying it.
I’m also a bit of a sports nut — I grew up playing a lot of them — mainly football, basketball and tennis. For better or worse these days it’s more watching than playing. Whether it’s car racing or Golden State Warriors basketball, I can’t get enough.
Who inspires you?
I give a lot of credit to young activists. It’s easy at a startup to think that your solution is going to be enough to solve climate change. But, it’s pretty clear that it will take a lot more than technology alone: we need people who are passionate if we want to see the large-scale societal change that it’ll take to save our climate. I’ve got a lot of faith in the next generation.
What’s a fun fact about yourself that most people might not know?
I am exceptionally good at reading words backwards. It is a completely useless skill, but, if you give me a paragraph I can just run right through it. I’ve been able to do that since I was a kid, but I am yet to find a good use for it.
Interested in working with people like Dustin and joining Antora’s mission? Check out our current openings to join us as we work towards decarbonizing industry and stopping climate change.
