Labs to Launch Profile: Dr. Matt Travers, Carnegie Mellon University
Tech and Talent From the Nations Top Labs
University labs are the bedrock of innovation in the US. Entire industries have come from university research, most recently autonomous vehicles, accelerated by the Darpa challenges, and generative AI which was accelerated by the open source collaboration that is the trademark of university research. Grit Ventures funds innovative researchers with breakthrough technology tackling massive opportunities in the physical world. It’s time to support and celebrate these technologists!
Labs to Launch is a new series where we will feature a big problem and an academic founder launching a new startup from the labs who is commercializing a solution.
First up — E-Waste: The $300B Opportunity We’re Throwing Away
Electronic waste is exploding—from 52M tons today to nearly 70M tons by 2032—yet only 22% of devices with valuable metals like copper and gold are recycled. In 2022, those metals alone were worth $91B.
The global e-recycling market is projected to hit $147B–$326B by 2035, but scaling solutions remains tough: complex product design and material contamination slow recovery.
Inside our laptops, phones, and servers lie gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and rare earths—critical resources we keep discarding.
It’s time for AI-driven detection, robotics, and micro-factories to turn e-waste into one of the world’s largest untapped supply chains.
Labs to Launch Profile: Dr. Matt Travers
Ever wonder where all the millions of iPhones go that are returned to Apple every year to be recycled? Dr. Matt Travers knows. His lab at CMU collaborated with Apple, who built the Daisy Robot to disassemble iPhones. Now he’s working on a e-recyling startup, RoboLoop.
Matt Travers grew up in Rhode Island and studied Engineering Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, later earning a Master’s in Electrical & Computer Engineering. He completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern before joining Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, first as a postdoc working on snake robots and later as faculty.
At CMU, Matt’s research group, the Matt Lab, develops “full-stack” autonomy solutions spanning perception, mapping, planning, and control. Their systems have been deployed in major efforts like the DARPA Subterranean Challenge and DARPA RACER program, which Matt co-led and led for CMU. Over beers, ask Matt for some good stories about the DARPA Challenges.
For the past five years, Matt has applied these autonomy concepts to automated e-waste disassembly. This work led to the creation of RoboLoop, a CMU spinout now commercializing robotic disassembly technology in State College, PA. Starting with flat-panel displays, RoboLoop aims to boost throughput, reduce manual labor, and expand operations to new regions.
The robotic technology licensed from CMU is being deployed to dramatically increase the flow of material through the existing facility while reducing the manual workload. The goal: keep 100% of the material in e-waste items out of landfill.
