Alumnus spotlight: Pier Giuseppe Rivano

UCL alumnus Pier Giuseppe Rivano shares how UCL shaped an international outlook and an impact-driven career, from engineering innovation to supporting the energy transition.

3 February 2026

Can you tell us about your background?

I am originally from a small village just outside Florence, in Italy. I did all my schooling there, then decided to leap: I took out a student loan and moved to London to study Mechanical Engineering at UCL. That decision opened up my world. During my Bachelor’s, I also spent a year at ETH Zurich, which allowed me to get the best of both the UK and Swiss university ecosystems. After graduating, I joined the Mercedes High Performance Powertrains Formula 1 team, where I learned what pushing limits of what’s possible really means in one of the fastest-paced and most demanding engineering environments - while paying off my student debt. I then returned to ETH Zurich for further studies, including a research stay in Boston, between MIT and Harvard Medical School. Today, I’m based in Zurich, and I have co-founded Unbound Potential, a startup developing rapidly scalable and sustainable batteries enabling greater integration of renewable energy into the power grid.

How did your time with us shape your career path?

Moving to London was incredibly exciting, but also a real challenge. I went from a small town to what felt like the centre of the world, where thousands of things were happening every second. I still remember arriving at Victoria Station the first afternoon and seeing people literally running down the street; that’s when I truly understood “rush hour”. I was also one of the few students in my class who had never studied in English before, so the first lectures were intense, and I quietly asked classmates about very basic engineering terms. They probably wondered what on earth I was doing there (rightly so!). Somehow, it all worked out. I built lasting friendships and learned that if I set my mind to something, even things that feel impossible at the beginning, become achievable when broken down into small steps.

Were there any particular experiences at UCL that had a lasting impact on you?

Absolutely. One of the most impactful aspects for me was the people. I met an incredibly diverse group of students, and many of those connections are still part of my life today. Coming from the Italian education system, which is quite academic and individual-focused, I quickly found myself out of my comfort zone at UCL with hands-on labs and group projects. At first, that felt uncomfortable, but I soon learned that great things are rarely built alone, and the people around you are often the biggest drivers of progress. Being surrounded by motivated students from around the world, many of whom had the opportunity to leave their home countries to challenge themselves, was inspiring and shaped how I work and build my team to this day.

Tell us about your company, Unbound Potential.

Today, the global energy transition is constrained not by renewable energy generation, but by the lack of grid-scale energy storage that can be deployed quickly, safely, and at a massive scale. As solar and wind penetration increases, power systems worldwide face instability, renewable curtailment, and continued reliance on fossil backup generation. Expanding transmission and distribution networks will require decades and trillions in investment, making storage the critical lever for stabilising existing grids. Conventional lithium-ion systems are poorly suited for this role due to fire risk, material scarcity, and geopolitically concentrated supply chains.
Unbound Potential is solving this with a next-generation, ultra-low-cost flow-battery system purpose-built for long-duration stationary storage. Our design is hyper-scalable and allows large-scale storage to be manufactured at a fraction of the ramp-up cost of lithium-ion factories. Using abundant, non-flammable materials and a modular design that decouples energy from power hardware, it enables fast deployment without the safety or supply-chain constraints of conventional batteries.

How did the idea for the business come about?

The idea came together during my Master’s at ETH Zurich, when I reconnected with my former Bachelor’s thesis supervisor. He had just read a paper that sparked a simple but bold idea: removing the membrane, the most fragile and expensive part of traditional flow batteries, and replacing it with immiscible liquids like water and oil used as electrolytes. Around the same time, researchers from nearby groups with perfectly complementary skills got excited, and we started prototyping. What began as a side project, carried out at night and on weekends at the ETH Student Project House (SPH), an incredible place where builders in Zurich come together to develop entrepreneurial ideas, quickly became serious. Winning a major grant from the German Agency for Disruptive Innovation allowed us to spin out the company, build our first lab, and hire a team. Fast forward to today, 3 years later, we are scaling and piloting our technology, with strong industry interest and have raised one of Europe’s largest pre-seed financing rounds (€14M), including €8M in non-dilutive funding.

What support did you get at UCL in your entrepreneurship journey?

During my Bachelor’s at UCL, I was very focused on academics and, honestly, I did not fully take advantage of the wide range of entrepreneurship support available. Looking back, that is on me. What stood out later, though, was the strength of the UCL network. Some investors reached out through UCL connections, and during fundraising, that support proved valuable. More broadly, I strongly believe it is not about where you study, but what you make of it, wherever you are. If you ask for help and really tap into your network, you will be surprised by how many people are willing to support you and open doors.

What has been the most rewarding aspect of your career so far?

A few years ago, I would probably have answered this by discussing a complex research problem I enjoyed trying to unravel. Today, without hesitation, it is building a very fast-growing, diverse, and high-performing team. It is one of the hardest things I have ever worked on, but also by far the most rewarding. Convincing talented people from all over the world to join us in tackling what I believe is the missing piece of the energy transition is incredibly energising. Seeing the team grow, collaborate, and push through tough challenges together to build something meaningful is hard to beat and is what motivates me every day. If you are ever in Zurich, come and have a look!