Kevin Hurlburtt

Kevin Hurlbutt, PhD, is an electrochemical engineer and entrepreneur. He is the chief executive officer and cofounder at Project K Energy, Inc. Project K is an early-stage, clean-energy, hard-tech startup developing potassium-ion batteries for fast-charging electric vehicles and affordable stationary storage while eliminating lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper. He is the principal investigator for a $2.6M development contract from the United States Department of Energy’s ARPA-E and for a $150K contract from the California Energy Commission. Along with his cofounder, Sam Wheeler, PhD, Kevin was accepted into the HAX accelerator program for hard-tech entrepreneurs in conjunction with investment into Project K from the venture-capital fund SOSV. The company has been honored recently as a Finalist in the World Materials Forum’s Startup Challenge 2024; as a Startup to Watch at VERGE 24; and as a competitor in Cleantech Open 2024.

Kevin studied for his doctorate at the University of Oxford in the Department of Materials with Professors Mauro Pasta and Feliciano Giustino where he developed materials for potassium- and sodium-ion batteries using a combination of first-principles computation and high-throughput, robot-assisted synthesis and characterization. His MS and BS degrees are from Stanford University’s Department of Chemical Engineering where he worked under Professor Jens Nørskov.

Kevin is based in Pasadena, California, where Project K keeps its labs.