Sila’s Gleb Yushin Shows How Immigrants Can Change The World

The world is better because Gleb Yushin pursued his dream of a scientific career in America. If Yushin had stayed in Russia, he might not have been a scientist and a professor and he almost certainly would not have become an entrepreneur. Like other immigrants to America before him, Gleb Yushin pursued a dream, bet on himself and made life better for many people.

Growing Up In The USSR And Russia

Gleb was in high school when the Soviet Union collapsed. In Leningrad, which became Saint Petersburg, he received an excellent education in math and science. Crime and corruption had surged, he said, and Russia’s future was uncertain by the time he contemplated what to study in college.

Many of his friends decided to study business. Gleb focused on science, earning a B.S. and M.S. in physics with the highest honors at the Polytechnic Institute in Saint Petersburg, one of the country’s best universities for physics and engineering. He also worked as a research assistant at the Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he said he had outstanding scientific mentors.

Leave Science Or Study At A U.S. University?

Despite the quality education he received in Saint Petersburg, Gleb did not see a future as a scientist in Russia. “While I was working at the Ioffe Institute, it became challenging to keep research tools up and running as there was almost no budget left for fixing them or buying new tools,” he said in an interview. “The salary of a professor or senior staff scientist was around $100 per month. I had a choice of immigrating or forgetting about a scientific career.”

“America seemed to be the most immigrant-friendly country,” he said. “I applied only to North Carolina State University because I learned about their wide-bandgap semiconductor research projects and was lucky to be accepted to their Ph.D. program.” His parents had immigrated to the United States four years earlier when his father took a job as a scientist. Gleb considered himself fortunate to be approved for a student visa since his wife was pregnant at the time, and the U.S. consulate had denied him a visitor’s visa a year earlier.

Like many people who grew up in the Soviet Union, his impressions of America were limited, given the Soviet government’s control of the news. He got most of his information about America from bootleg video cassettes of movies, typically shown in illegal video salons. The Arnold Schwarzenegger film Terminator 2 made the biggest impression on him. “The special effects were fantastic,” he said. “It was just mind-blowing. I couldn’t even comprehend how people could create such a movie.”

Adapting To Life In The United States

In addition to studying in a new country, Gleb also decided to switch his field of study, not an easy choice for someone who had already earned a master’s degree. He changed to a newer discipline, materials science, “the study of the properties of solid materials and how those properties are determined by a material’s composition and structure.”

Gleb found the transition to America challenging. “I didn’t have a credit history, my health insurance didn’t fully cover the hospital expenses for when my son was born, and the closest grocery store was a 40-minute walk,” he said. Buying a car was out of the question for an international student in his first year of a graduate fellowship.

“What helped a lot were remarkably friendly and supportive people on campus and in the city,” said Gleb. “An American family started to selflessly help us adapt to a new life, inviting us to many family holidays. My Ph.D. adviser, Prof. Zlatko Sitar, was also very hospitable and supportive, and my fellow Ph.D. students mentored me as I switched my major and had many gaps in knowledge.”

The lab facilities at N.C. State were excellent. He learned how to build and use complex research tools and produce and test electronic devices. He praised his professors and said that unlike his courses in Russia, which focused on math and fundamentals, his U.S. classes also covered more practical aspects of science.

“Overall, the academic environment in the top universities in the U.S. turned out to be much more mobile, flexible, inclusive and entrepreneurial than in Russia or Europe 20-plus years ago,” he said. “Each research team in the U.S. has lots of autonomy and functions somewhat analogously to a small business unit, where professors compete to recruit the best students, attract research funding for the most innovative ideas and produce high-impact publications, presentations and, in some cases, patents. Like small businesses, some groups succeed and make large impacts in their fields, and others fail and have to look for opportunities elsewhere.”

Gleb’s thesis at N.C. State focused on novel processing of electronic devices. He moved to Drexel University (on an H-1B visa) as a postdoctoral researcher to work on nanostructured materials for energy, environment and biomedical applications. He had a “fantastic mentor” (Prof. Yury Gogotsi) and earned a promotion to research assistant professor.

The green card process for Gleb began at Drexel and concluded after he moved to Georgia Tech (in 2007) as a tenure-track assistant professor. He started a research group focused on unlocking the potential of lithium-ion batteries. “After learning at Drexel about the numerous challenges of commercializing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, I thought that inventing novel materials for making better and cheaper batteries for transportation might be the best strategy,” said Gleb. He reasoned that high-volume production of lithium-ion batteries could have a significant impact.

Becoming An Entrepreneur

In deciding what to do with his technology, Gleb, although only in America for a short time, made a sophisticated risk analysis based on his understanding of corporate culture. According to conventional wisdom, starting a business is risky but joining a large, established company is safe. He believed the opposite would be the case for developing breakthrough technology. In Gleb’s view, new technologies can take a long time to develop, but at large companies, patience could wear thin, and a company’s priorities might change, or the executives who championed the technology could move on.

With this in mind, in 2009, he became involved with the technology incubator at Georgia Tech. Over the next two years, Gleb spoke with entrepreneurs and industry executives. In 2011, he met Gene Berdichevsky. Gene immigrated to America as a child from Ukraine, though it wasn’t until a month after they met that Gleb realized the two had a common background in the former Soviet Union. Gene was the seventh employee at Tesla Motors (the principal engineer on the Roadster battery), earned an M.S. in engineering from Stanford and holds dozens of patents.

“In early 2011, I met Gene, who became a cofounder and CEO of Sila,” said Gleb. “I was intrigued by his vision to build a company that would last over a century. We immediately hit it off and came together on our shared vision of building a battery materials company that would dramatically increase the energy density of lithium-ion batteries with silicon anodes and other revolutionary technologies. He was seven years younger than me but more mature than people twice his age.”

Both men believed electric vehicles would eventually replace combustion engine cars and that renewable energy solutions would outperform coal and natural gas power plants. “We wanted to use our passion and skills to accelerate the move to a sustainable energy economy,” said Gleb. “Together with our third cofounder and outstanding engineer Alex Jacobs, we built Sila Nanotechnologies.”

Sila Nanotechnologies

Founded in 2011, Sila Nanotechnologies is valued at over $3 billion with approximately 350 employees. The company’s headquarters is in Alameda, California. Gleb Yushin is the chief technology officer (CTO) and has remained a tenured professor at Georgia Tech.

Gleb praises the company’s investors as “patient and visionary.” He said, “If you don’t have a common vision between you and your investors, it can lead to disaster. But we have fantastic investors, and together we have built this vision that we are going to produce new materials for lithium-ion batteries that would enable much better performance at a much lower cost.” He said the investors understood that a company focused on producing new technology that can have a dramatic impact needed time.

In May 2022, the company achieved a milestone when Mercedes-Benz announced it would use Sila’s technology in its electric cars. “Mercedes-Benz . . . will work with Sila, a next-generation battery materials company, to incorporate Sila’s silicon anode chemistry in batteries which are optionally available for the first time in the upcoming electric Mercedes-Benz G-Class,” according to the announcement. “Compared to today’s commercially available cells with a comparable format, Sila’s technology enables a 20-40% increase in energy density . . . This major development enables Mercedes-Benz to store much more energy in the same space, thus increasing the range of its future vehicles by a significant amount.”

Mercedes-Benz is the first announced automotive customer to benefit from Sila’s new Washington state manufacturing facility. In 2021, Sila partnered with WHOOP on its health and fitness wearables “to deliver a 20% increase in energy density with a 33% reduction in device size.”

When asked what most excites him about Sila’s future, Gleb lists three things. “First, our breakthrough science will accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies,” he said. “As we don’t need to change the way batteries are made, adopting our materials is easy. We engineered silicon anodes that drop into existing lithium-ion battery cells to enable significantly higher energy density, without compromising other performance metrics. This was the first revolutionary innovation to lithium-ion batteries in 30 years and is the first step to the electrification of everything.

“Second, we have successfully brought major scientific innovations out of the lab and into manufacturing at scale—that’s what’s driving energy transformation and radical product innovation.

“And third, it’s not just what we do, but also how we do it. Only a few companies sustain being innovative, so we put a lot of effort into building a unique innovation engine at Sila. We don’t just have smart scientists and engineers. We have intellectual athletes. Our fantastic engineers build the tools to enable scientists like me to iterate faster and extremely efficiently. Our strategy, supply chain, product, equipment and process development teams work closely with our R&D [research and development] team to identify the most attractive opportunities for focused innovation. It’s truly inspiring.”

Two Hundred Patents Later

When asked the number of patents he has authored or coauthored, Gleb replied, “Like 200.” When the number was repeated, he said, “Over 200. It does sound insane when you say it like this.”

Commenting on an October 2022 U.S. Department of Energy grant, Drexel University Professor Yury Gogotsi said, “Extremely proud of Gleb Yushin’s achievements. He started to work on electrochemical energy storage at the Drexel Nanomaterials Institute more than a decade ago, and now he is a national and international leader in both science and technology of battery materials.”

Gleb Yushin appears to be a living example of a 2021 economic study that found immigrants to the United States are “up to six times more productive than migrants to other countries” and those who stayed at home and did not immigrate. The U.S. university system, the business climate, the rule of law and other factors allow Gleb and other immigrants to achieve their potential in ways not possible elsewhere.

Gleb said if he did not immigrate from Russia in 1999, he likely would have decided to leave by 2008, or at the latest 2014 because by that point, the country’s movement toward corruption and authoritarianism would have been clear. If he had stayed in Russia during those years, he would have worked as a middleman or produced something to sell to support his family. Gleb expects if he did not leave Russia when he did and waited too long, his life and career would have turned out much differently. “If I immigrated later, it is unlikely I would have contributed that much to science or developed new technologies. I would not have had such a meaningful mission in life.”

Grateful For the Opportunity

Above all, Gleb Yushin is grateful for the opportunity America has offered him. “The beauty of the United States is that it is a country of opportunities, where the sky is the limit if you study and work smart and hard,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where you come from.” Gleb said he is happy his children will have the opportunity to find their own passions and contribute to the world in their own ways.

He identifies America’s “entrepreneurial ecosystem” as unique and inclusive and views it as arguably the country’s most valuable asset. “Immigration is always hard, but I feel lucky that I did it early in my life and decided to move to America,” said Gleb. “I don’t think there is another country on the planet where I could cofound and build a company like Sila.”