Lakshana Huddar

Lakshana is an Investment Associate at The Engine, where she brings over a decade of experience in academic research and commercialization of climate focused technologies. She helped build Activate Boston, an entrepreneurial fellowship program supporting science innovators from concept to first product. She was involved in selecting promising individuals from academia and guiding them through the early stages of building a startup, providing technical, fundraising, team building and market support. Prior to that Lakshana was a fellow at ARPA-E, a high-risk high-impact funding agency within the Department of Energy. She developed and evaluated new technical spaces that merited funding, exploring and funding projects in a number of sectors including enhanced geothermal systems, nuclear fission and fusion, as well as robust supply chains for climatetech through deep-sea mining.

Lakshana holds a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MEng in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London.