Carmichael Roberts

Carmichael is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Material Impact, and bases the fund's strategy on his successful career as an entrepreneur-investor in materials, blending a unique business model of licensing university technology and commercializing it through targeted partnerships with Fortune 500 companies. His current investments include Soft Robotics and Zero Mass Water.

Carmichael is also member of Breakthrough Energy, a mission-oriented group committed to changing the world by creating and building companies that address the threat of climate change and long-term sustainability of the planet. As part of their work, Breakthrough Energy will invest over $1B over the next 20 years to help scale products for energy, transportation, agriculture, and construction, with a focus on big concept projects that promise the largest possible benefit to the earth’s future.

As a General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, Carmichael financed and built several successful companies that create innovative products by applying material science, including 1366 technologies and Foro Energy. He also serves as co-founder and chairman of Diagnostics For All, a creative hybrid non-profit and for-profit business that is developing paper-based diagnostics for poor and rural populations in developing nations.

Prior to North Bridge, Carmichael co-founded several ventures, and served as President and CEO of Arsenal Medical.

Prior to his entrepreneurial career, Carmichael worked in business development at GelTex Pharmaceuticals, acquired by Genzyme for $1.3 billion, and in new product and business development at Dow Chemical (formerly Union Carbide Corporation).

Carmichael serves on the boards for the National Venture Capital Association, the Consumer Technology Association and Massachusetts General Hospital Physician Organization. Carmichael is a trustee of Duke University. In 1999, he was named by MIT’s Technology Review as one of the world’s top 100 young entrepreneurs.

Carmichael received his BS and PhD in organic chemistry from Duke University and completed his postdoctoral National Science Foundation fellowship at Harvard University. Carmichael also has an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Carmichael loves coaching his kids’ lacrosse teams and taking weekly spin classes. As a former Trustee of the Berklee College of Music and an Overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Carmichael is a major supporter of the local music community in Boston.