For Nate Lowery ’06 and Sebastien Douville ’06, coming to Princeton meant the chance to do something amazing. “Any student who comes up with a good idea and wants to run with it, whether it’s a business or a club or a cool research topic, there’s lots of support and flexibility,” says Lowery. “People are excited about good ideas at Princeton.”

Lowery and Douville have had their share of good ideas. Both mechanical engineers, they teamed up during their sophomore year to launch the Princeton chapter of Engineers Without Borders, a humanitarian organization that uses engineering solutions to improve life in communities worldwide.

“We’re one of the best and largest chapters in the world” in part because of Princeton's excellent funding, says Douville, who helped organize trips to rural Peru to build a water-storage facility, and to Ethiopia to design a solar power plant. Princeton has provided over $100,000 to Engineers Without Borders to fund their projects, an incredible investment in the students and their ideas.

Their next project turned out to be even more ambitious. With the help of their senior thesis adviser, Professor Craig Arnold, the two developed a revolutionary way to blend biodiesel fuel from 100% natural soybean oil. Not satisfied with a poster presentation and a research paper, they petitioned for extra funding to build a working biodiesel production plant on campus.

Lowery and Douville were amazed each time the School of Engineering and Applied Science fulfilled yet another application for increased funding or agreed to something that was seemingly nuts. “It’s great to have so much support,” says Douville.

Inspired by Professor Ed Zschau’s “High-Tech Entrepreneurship” class, Lowery and Douville decided to forgo lucrative job offers in the finance world after graduation. “[Professor Zschau's] overall message is to get out there and do something useful with your talents,” says Lowery, who together with Douville, started Axios Energy, a biodiesel company based partly on technology developed during their senior engineering project.

So far, their venture has been successful. “Being from Princeton has opened up some interesting opportunities across the biodiesel industry, which we’re exploring,” says Lowery, who believes this is the perfect time to enter such a “young and exciting” field with so much potential. Lowery and Douville know how to maximize potential. With everything they learned at Princeton about how to take an idea, gather the resources, and make it happen, “We can offer much more than simply our technology,” says Lowery.