Sustainable engineering startup and University of Kanas spinout, Icorium Engineering Company, announces the addition of Erik Blume as Chief Strategy Officer. Blume joins the company as it prepares to rapidly scale its R&D operations in Lawrence and will focus on building operations while developing commercial opportunities surrounding the company’s core technologies.
Blume, who has worked with Icorium’s cofounders since before the company was formed, joins the company at a critical stage in its lifecycle. “When he was with the KU Innovation park, Erik helped advise Mark Shiflett and I in the very early stages when we were still kicking around the idea of starting a company, and helped us write the STTR proposal that got us off the ground,” says Dr. Kalin Baca, Icorium’s Cofounder and CEO, “We’re excited that everything has worked out to where he can join us a full-time and at just the right time.”
Blume brings nearly a decade of entrepreneurial experience to Icorium as a startup founder, advisor, and consultant. Previously a musician and music educator, Blume studied jazz saxophone at the UMKC Conservatory, earning his masters in 2013 while working as a freelance musician throughout the Kansas City area. He went on to graduate from KU in 2019 with an MBA and a Juris Doctorate with a Certificate in Business and Commercial Law. Blume has spent the past seven years supporting and advising startups, first as a Business Analyst with the KU Innovation Park, where he progressed to become VP of Business Resources before leaving to found Liminix Consulting, LLC, a startup consulting firm focused on assisting deep-tech startups like Icorium. During that time he worked with dozens of startup teams and would-be founders seeking to commercialize deep-tech discoveries, seeing first-hand the challenges that young companies face in their efforts to bring innovative new technologies to market. “At first, you see all of these incredible technologies pouring out of the university and it’s hard to imagine that they wouldn’t all turn into billion-dollar companies–but obviously they don’t, for many reasons,” says Blume of his experience working with university startups. “Icorium’s technology clearly has significant scientific and commercial potential, but what I’ve learned is that the tech is only a tiny part of the equation and what matters most in the beginning are the people behind it. It was clear to me from day-one that Kalin and Mark are the kind of founders who can make a startup work, says Blume, “I’m just incredibly excited to be a part of this team, and we have big plans for Icorium in 2024.”
About Icorium
Icorium Engineering Company is a climate-tech startup developing and commercializing technologies to enable true circular economies for refrigerants, propellants, and other complex azeotropic chemical mixtures. Icorium specializes in modeling and pilot-scale validation of complex chemical separations, as well as commercial design of specialized extractive and fractional distillation systems. Icorium is located at the KU Innovation Park on KU’s West Campus in Lawrence, KS. For more information, visit www.icoriumengineering.com.