Xiangkun (Elvis) Cao

Co-founder, C2X & Food2X

Xiangkun (Elvis) Cao (https://www.elviscao.com/) is a Ph.D. Candidate on CO2 conversion at Cornell, and an incoming postdoctoral researcher at MIT on CO2 capture. He co-founded two social enterprises (C2X & Food2X). His Ph.D. work on HI-Light, a scalable solar reactor technology for converting CO2 into fuels, received the $20K Grand Prize (1/1,150) in the “Create the Future” Design Contest (2017). It was also featured as an energy breakthrough of the past decade by the World Economic Forum (WEF) (2020). The commercial partner in the HI-Light effort was named a finalist in the $20M Carbon XPRIZE (1 of 10 globally) (2016-2021).

Elvis was a UN Technical Working Group Member on Energy Transitions (2021), UNICEF Young WASH Changemaker (2020), and UNEP Young Champions of the Earth finalist (2020, 2019). He is a German Chancellor Fellow (2021), Lindau Nobel Alumnus (2020), Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree (2019), among others.

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