Current Partners
Who's involved now
Sunstrike Optics LLC
Provides engineering development, instrumentation design, prototype fabrication, and technical leadership for SHINE's hardware work. Sunstrike is the founding technical partner of SHINE Initiative.
Texas A&M University
Students in the Harnessing Solar Energy course engage with SHINE hardware — PV-Scope monitoring and concentrating solar work. Research feeds back into SHINE Initiative directly.
Your Institution Here
We're actively seeking university, community, and maker organization partners. If you see a connection between your work and SHINE's focus, let's talk.
The forge and what grows around it
The blacksmith's shop wasn't just a forge. It was an ecosystem of skill, relationship, and local capability that developed around a concentrated source of heat. Toolmakers, metalworkers, farmers, builders — each community's forge was a node in a web of local production and repair.
SHINE is building the modern equivalent. The solar furnace is the forge. But what we're really working toward is the ecosystem — the people, skills, institutions, and community relationships that make a forge useful rather than just interesting.
That means SHINE needs more than engineers. It needs:
Researchers
Materials science, thermal engineering, optics, process chemistry
Educators
University and community college faculty who can connect students to real hardware
Community Orgs
Groups thinking about local resilience, fabrication capacity, or material loops
Makers & Builders
People who can build, iterate, and document hardware in ways others can learn from
Students
At any level — engineering, materials, sustainability, design
Funders
Foundations, agencies, or individuals aligned with community-scale energy technology
Student Contributors
Students doing real work on real hardware
Students working through the SHINE Initiative and Texas A&M University's Harnessing Solar Energy course have contributed to hardware development, instrumentation, and research that feeds directly back into the initiative. This section will grow as the work develops.