Outside her window in Fairbanks, Alaska, Serena Allen is watching the sunrise. It's a beautiful sight, the colors intensified by something less pleasant: Fairbanks is the third-most polluted region in the United States.
Originally from Palmdale, Allen founded AirVitalize to combat air pollution head-on. A third-place honoree in the USC Marshall Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies New Venture Seed Competition (NVSC) in 2024, AirVitalize is using filterless ionization technology to clean outdoor air. The goal - increasingly relevant after wildfires ravaged communities all over Los Angeles County - is climate resilience.
Allen earned a bachelor's from the USC Price School of Public Policy, later enrolling in the course "Innovation in Engineering and Design for Global Crises" at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, which took Allen and her peers to Fairbanks. They interviewed residents, asking, "What is your most unsolvable problem?"
"We found out that residential wood burning causes a lot of air pollution," Allen said. "But at the same time, people in Fairbanks told us wood burning saved them enough money to send their kids to college."
The first solution Allen and her teammates created was a chimney retrofit device. But after receiving feedback from residents, mentors and insurers, they realized these devices were not a viable option.
The team went back to the problem. "We looked at our core tech and realized we could apply similar principles to outdoor air filtration," Allen said.
The technology aims to make an impact on atmospheric conditions called temperature inversions. Instead of using filters, which would add waste to landfills and increase electricity consumption, AirVitalize uses ionization to clean the air.
"Think about what happens when you rub a balloon against your hair," Allen said. "Your hair sticks. Particles that are 100 times smaller than human hair will stick to the ionized particles in a similar way."
To ensure this solution has a net positive impact, AirVitalize plans to use solar panels to fuel energy needs in L.A. and create a specific airflow shape for the product to increase the area that can be cleaned.
Mentorship and more
Finding the right people to forward a mission isn't easy. Allen formed her original team after connecting with four USC Viterbi students at a recruitment event. Together, they completed the I-Corps program through the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which helped fund their December 2022 trip. Early funds, such as those secured from the Greif Center Blackstone LaunchPad, NVSC and the Marshall Catalyst Fund, went primarily to prototyping and discovery. The NVSC funds have also supported AirVitalize's first case study.
Beyond financial resources, mentorship was key. Allen gained confidence in fundraising and honed the startup's business model. "I think we changed our business model three or four times just talking it through and getting feedback in the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds of NVSC," she said. "We practiced our finals pitch and refined it using Greif Blackstone LaunchPad resources, and expanded our network in the startup community as a result of our participation in the competition."
Up next is more fundraising. AirVitalize was able to put together $190,000 in non-diluted funding. Now it's working to attract investors while being mindful of their overall goals.
"If you're not grounded in your problem, you're not going to make it - whether you have VC funding or not," Allen said. "There are so many companies that raise money and don't get there, because they're focused on their solution only. That's what makes AirVitalize unique. We know air pollution is a huge problem, but we're not selling clean air; we're selling the hope that we can overcome the negative impacts of air pollution."
Cleaning the great outdoors
The concept of cleaning air outside can be daunting, not just from the perspective of volume, but also because outdoor air is dynamic. Changing the entire atmosphere is not AirVitalize's goal. Instead, AirVitalize aims to focus on areas with temperature inversions.
Normally, the lower an area is, the warmer it will be. In the case of a temperature inversion, air gets warmer the higher it is. According to Allen, the inversion in Los Angeles can be 1,000 to 2,000 feet high, compared to Fairbanks, where it is anywhere from 15 to 200 feet. "How this happens is that the floor of this area, surrounded by mountains, gets colder because the air settles down and is trapped by a warm layer."
These inversions trap pollutants, and as global temperatures rise, they become more prevalent.
"We're a climate resiliency technology," Allen said. "It's very possible the air quality in Los Angeles will return to what it was like in the '70s and '80s. We're here so people can still have happy and healthy moments with their loved ones outside, no matter how the climate is changing."
In L.A., which will host World Cup matches in 2026 and the Summer Olympics two years later, AirVitalize is targeting athletics because stadiums have very compacted temperature inversions. "Being in a stadium is actually one of the least healthy outdoor spaces in the entire region," Allen said. "It also affects athletes. The air quality you train and perform in can be the difference between getting the gold at the Olympics or not even qualifying."
In Fairbanks, the focus is less on outdoor stadiums and more on state implementation plans mandated by the Clean Air Act. For places that are listed as unhealthy, such as Fairbanks, working solutions can be fast-tracked and shared. Allen hopes AirVitalize will be one such solution.
"It means not only positively benefiting the people who we started with and don't want to leave behind, but also fast-tracking it to every person across the United States, and, eventually, the globe," Allen said.
