ECE Undergrad Alex Lombardi Wins First Prize in UMass Amherst Minute Pitch Contest
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On October 16th in the Old Chapel, undergraduate researcher Alex Lombardi of the UMass Amherst Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department delivered the $1,000 first-prize presentation in the campus Minute Pitch Competition, hosted by the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship of the Isenberg School of Management. Lombardi’s winning pitch summarized the work that he and four other undergraduate colleagues from UMass Amherst have been doing in the lab of ECE Associate Professor Jun Yao to help turn Yao’s revolutionary energy source known as “Air-Gen” into a viable startup venture.
As the Berthiaume Center website recapped the proceedings: “In just 60 seconds each, students wowed the crowd and judges with creative, high-impact ideas that could shape the future.”
Lombardi’s winning pitch encapsulated the work being done by himself and four other campus undergrads – ECE’s Milo Loyall, Aaron Lo, and Cheng-Yu Wang and Vincent Frye from the Microbiology Department – to transform Air-Gen into an entrepreneurial prospect. According to this team, “Air-Gen is a revolutionary technology that generates electricity from the humidity in the air, aiming to unlock a new class of scalable, sustainable power solutions for devices and infrastructure.” See the team’s website at Air-Gen.
Air-Gen is a concept that has been engineered, researched, and developed in Yao’s lab for the past few years. In September of 2025, in fact, Yao was the principal investigator (PI) on a large award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) supporting his research on Air-Gen “to harvest clean energy from thin air.”
Yao collaborated with two on-campus co-PIs – Professor Deepak Ganesan of the College of Information and Computer Sciences and Research Assistant Professor Toshiyuki Ueki of the Microbiology Department – to obtain the $1.5-million grant from the NSF.
As Yao sums up the technology, “Moisture in the air can carry electricity, as demonstrated by the lightning we see during a thunderstorm. This means that power can be retrieved anytime, anywhere, without relying on the sun, wind, or even a battery.”
According to Yao and his colleagues, “The goal of this [NSF] research project is to develop wafer-scale, modular integration of Air-Gen technology as a universal and ubiquitous powering solution for Internet of Things and wearable devices.”
Lombardi, who founded his award-winning undergraduate team to focus on transforming Air-Gen into a going concern, says that he is “passionate about renewable energy and dedicated to making a difference.”
Lombardi has been interning at an engineering-consultant firm, where he has been involved in drafting plans and designing electrical-power systems with a focus on green-energy solutions. After he earns his B.S. in Electrical Engineering, he says he is “eager to continue developing research in renewable energy and making a positive impact on our world.”
In that context, as Lombardi and his team members conclude, “Air-Gen is pioneering a new way to generate electricity from humidity. It is clean, continuous, and available anywhere on Earth.”
The Berthiaume Center explains that the Minute Pitch Competition is one of its signature fall kick-off events. “It is designed to help students think, communicate confidently, and bring their innovative, creative, entrepreneurial ideas to life.” (October 2025)