LEEP Fellowship (Seed)
Offers students and early career scholars with mentoring support for LEEP Fellowship in energy systems, climate technology, and manufacturing.
The Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP), administered by the DOE Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) — formally aligned under OTC as of May 13, 2026 — embeds early-stage energy technology founders inside U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratories for a two-year, fully funded fellowship. Fellows receive a paid personal living stipend, healthcare benefits, a yearly travel allowance, and direct access to laboratory equipment and scientists at their host institution. LEEP is designed specifically for first-time technical founders working on hardware-intensive clean energy technologies that require deep lab integration to advance toward commercial deployment.
Eligibility is individual only — teams cannot apply together. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents with a technical degree and four to five years of R&D experience, and must be willing to relocate full-time for the two-year fellowship period. Applicants currently enrolled in a Ph.D. or postdoctoral program are not eligible, nor are those who have raised more than $2 million in prior funding. The four host laboratory nodes each run independent application cycles: Chain Reaction Innovations at Argonne National Laboratory, Cyclotron Road at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Innovation Crossroads at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and West Gate at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The most recent cohort of 27 innovators was selected on July 14, 2025; a 2026 cohort call had not been announced at research time.
Prospective applicants should apply directly to the node whose technology focus best matches their work, as each node operates its own portal and selection timeline. There is no central DOE application portal for LEEP. Given the two-year residency requirement and the node-specific focus areas, fit between the applicant's technology domain and the host lab's scientific capabilities is a primary selection criterion.
Early-stage clean energy technology ventures led by first-time technical founders, embedded full-time for two years inside DOE National Laboratories through a paid fellowship program.
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