Dr. Franchessa Sayler graduated with a Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2013 from The University of Alabama. While she was working on her degree at UA, she recognized an unmet market need and applied the technology she had developed during her graduate studies to solve this problem. This innovation took what she had developed under Prof. Martin Bakker for use in the field of separations and applied it to the field of catalysis. Dr. Sayler started ThruPore Technologies in 2012. She has received $1.5M in National Science Foundation and University of Alabama grant money as the Principal Investigator to turn this innovation into a product. Along the way she has developed new innovations with customers centered around utilizing the ThruPore catalyst to make new and improved processes for chemical production. Dr. Sayler has raised an outside investment round to further grow her company and is entering the commercial production phase of her product.