THE FUSE

Carmichael Roberts has spent his career at the boundary where laboratory science becomes commercial enterprise. The chief investment officer of Breakthrough Energy and co-founder and managing partner of Material Impact, a Boston-based venture firm with nearly $800 million in assets under management, occupies a position in the global investment landscape that has no close equivalent. He simultaneously oversees one of the largest climate technology investment programs on earth, backed by Bill Gates and a consortium of the world's wealthiest individuals, while running his own independent fund dedicated to turning advances in materials science into scalable companies that solve real-world problems.