How a Chance Encounter Became a Game-Changing Research Partnership
AI generated image of Manu, Sophia, and Soren.
From a Booth to a Breakthrough: How Soren Larsen and CarbonBridge Sparked a Science Research Partnership based on AI at a Santa Cruz Works Event
At every Santa Cruz Works event, there’s a sense of possibility in the air — a belief that when bright minds come together, meaningful change can happen. That belief was on full display at Blue Innovation Day, hosted at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, where Soren Larsen first met Manu Pillai and Sophia Xu. Manu and Sophia were there representing CarbonBridge, a company on a mission to turn waste, like greenhouse gases into chemicals and fuels at point of need.
At the time, it felt like a great conversation — the kind that makes these community gatherings so valuable. But no one knew it would lead to a groundbreaking partnership that merges cutting edge science and artificial intelligence.
CarbonBridge is tackling one of the most pressing challenges in bio-industrials, making fuels and chemicals from bio resources around us, at costs on parity with or lower than those sourced from fossil products. Their proprietary technology uses cutting edge bioreactors that boost microbe performance to convert gases, like methane (CH₄) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) from organic waste into ultra-low-carbon fuels, like methanol (CH₃OH) and acetate, delivering a a renewable fuel with major implications for the maritime industry and core chemicals for the chemical industry. Their innovation earned them the 2024 Wallenius Wilhelmsen Orcelle® Award for sustainable shipping, ARPA-E support — and earlier, a winning spot in Cohort 5 of Santa Cruz Accelerates, our regional startup accelerator.
During their Blue Innovation Day discussion, Manu mentioned a common but critical obstacle in scientific research: reviewing and synthesizing enormous volumes of academic literature. It’s essential to their work, but incredibly time-consuming. Standard tools like ChatGPT or even Perpexity don’t work well enough as they lack insight and can randomly “hallucinate” - making dependence on them for core science work high risk.
That’s when Soren, who has deep experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP), recognized an opportunity. He shared insights from the UC Santa Cruz NLP Master’s Program, where students build real-world tools as part of their capstone projects. An idea began to form — what if NLP could be used to streamline CarbonBridge’s research pipeline?
When capstone sponsor recruitment opened, Soren organized a meeting with Manu at the UCSC Silicon Valley Campus. The conversation quickly turned into collaboration. Soon after, CarbonBridge was approved as an official capstone sponsor. Manu returned to speak with the full student cohort, kicking off a partnership focused on building intelligent tools to tackle scientific overload that could apply to cutting edge research across the world
Soren is now working alongside peers Camellia Bazargan and Yifei Gan to develop NLP tools that can automatically review literature, extract structured data, and accelerate insights. These tools are not just for CarbonBridge — they have the potential to benefit any researcher navigating the dense and rapidly growing world of scientific publications
This story is more than a case study in innovation — it’s a testament to the value of local networking. From a chance conversation at Blue Innovation Day to a formal partnership grounded in shared goals, this collaboration shows how Santa Cruz Works events foster real connections that lead to real outcomes.
Whether it’s Santa Cruz Works New Tech night or a large-scale community showcase, these gatherings are designed to spark ideas and build bridges — because you never know which booth, handshake, or conversation might lead to the next big breakthrough.