When Clay and Marie Wilkes donated $20 million to found the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy at the University of Utah in 2022, they envisioned a venture to support cutting-edge science, education, public policy and entrepreneurial solutions that urgently address the threats of climate change.

The next year, the center debuted the historic $1.5 million Wilkes Climate Prize, now known as the Climate Launch Prize. The annual award targets credible, ambitious and audacious ideas deemed too risky for traditional funding sources. One of the largest university-affiliated prizes in the world, its goal is to push through potential breakthroughs with a one-time, unrestricted cash offer.

Lumen Bioscience and Applied Carbon, the respective 2023 and 2024 prize winners, shared how they’ve leveraged the momentous awards at the 2025 Wilkes Climate Summit on May 15 at the U campus. Learn more about the seven finalists vying for the 2025 prize here.

Lumen Bioscience

Lumen Bioscience was the inaugural winner of the $1.5 million prize, based on their proposal to eliminate methane produced in cow guts. Methane has 80 times more warming power over a 20-year timeframe than does carbon dioxide. Methane from human activities, mostly agriculture, causes at least 25% of modern global warming.

When cows eat grass or grains, gut microbes called methanogens break down the plant matter and produce methane gas as a byproduct, which cattle expel via burping. Lumen scientists proposed a way to eliminate this gastric gas at the source, using a solution from nature.

They looked at viruses specialized to kill methanogens using an enzyme called lysin. These lysins are exquisitely specific to methanogens and have no effect on the cow itself or any other bacteria in the animal’s rumen.

Lumen was the first to discover how to genetically engineer the edible algae, spirulina, a process they primarily applied to human drug manufacturing. Scientists extended the technique to engineer spirulina that produces methanogen-killing lysins. Trials showed that just a small amount of the lysin-spirulina could eliminate methanogens in a cow’s rumen within minutes.

At the time of their win, Lumen had verified that their process worked in the lab and would use the prize money to take the project to the next stage.

“This was an idea I came up with over coffee with one of the company’s vice presidents, Nhi Khuong, but we didn’t really have money. It was just me and a technician, Jason Dang, running experiments here and there. But we had a prototype when we applied for the prize,” Mark Heinnickel, Lumen principal scientist, said at the Wilkes Climate Summit. “The Wilkes Foundation thought it was a great idea and gave us the seed funding to get started. Let me show you what we got for that.”

Heinnickel explained that they built a new lab to create a library of spirulina strains that produce dozens of methane-killing enzyme cocktails. They’ve scaled up manufacturing, made lots of products and tested on real cattle. They’ve found that it works without harming the cow’s health production.

“Based on the strength of this work, we were able to raise more funds and talk to investors,” he said, and added an unexpected benefit—the press from the award tied Lumen to efforts for methane reduction online. “A lot of people are interested in this problem. When they googled it, the Wilkes Center came up and we were associated with it. It’s a great, great thing for our program, and it’s been able to keep funds going.”

“We’ve made great progress, and it all started here,” he said.

Applied Carbon

Applied Carbon won the second, $500,000 Wilkes Launch Prize for their proposal to use biochar farm robots to target the 170 million metric tons of carbon dioxide produced annually by food and crop waste.

After a harvest, most large-scale agricultural operations in the United States either leave the leftovers in the fields or till them into the soil. In both cases, microbes break down the organic matter and produce CO₂ and other greenhouse gases.

For thousands of years to today, Indigenous people have burned crop waste to make biochar, a product that locks in carbon dioxide for millennia, while improving agricultural yields and the environment, in countless ways.

Applied Carbon developed a mobile, in-field solution that picks up crop waste left over from harvesting and converts it into biochar in a single pass. The carbon-rich product is deposited back into the field, improving yields, reducing fertilizer needs and removing and storing carbon for millions of years.

Applied Carbon’s machine, called a pyrolizer, works like this: It picks up and minces crop residue such as corn, rice or cotton and blows it into a processor, then a reactor. The reactor heats the biomass to 1,000°F in a low-oxygen environment, producing biochar and syngas. The syngas is further processed until it releases as clean heat. The biochar is drenched with water and spread onto the field.

At the time, the young company was self-funding the pyrolizer units and planned to use the money to build out their fleet. Since the award, they’ve expanded their team and adapted the system to scale.

“We have adapted this technology and developed a system to convert all kinds of biomass waste and agricultural waste into biochar at a scale that works for a commercial corn farm,” said Jason Aramburu, cofounder and CEO of Applied Carbon at the 2025 Wilkes Climate Summit.

Since the win, they’ve expanded their team and moved into the panhandle of Texas, a big corn-producing region. They’ve also expanded their crop of investors and strategic partnerships, including government agencies like the USDA NRCS.

“That’s really exciting because they have approved biochar as a soil conservation technique, which means that every season, farmers who work with us get up to $1,200 per acre from the USDA. And that’s continuing today, even under this administration, to cover their costs of procuring and applying the biochar,” Aramburu said.

Their trials have shown that biochar increases soil water retention by 50% and significant productivity gains for European farmers using their biochar. They’ve also built a dedicated software platform to manage the pyrolizer fleet to track carbon credits they’ve generated and sell them to large corporations, including Microsoft and Shopify.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg and the beginning of this new industry. We ultimately believe that the biochar is the best solution for these big emitters to reduce their carbon footprint by buying these credits,” said Aramburu. “It’s been really exciting to have the support of the Wilkes Foundation and the center here at the university.”

• Ross Chambless Community Engagement Manager, Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy
  (801) 646-6067 ross.chambless@utah.edu