Miami students use space shuttle insulation in coat line

The idea came to Michael Markesbery while hiking to the summit of Säntis, a mountain in Switzerland on the northern edge of the Alps.

It was summer 2013, and Markesbery was getting a little traveling in before starting his junior year at Miami University.

In previous months, the zoology major and neuroscience minor from Indian Hill had acquired a fascination with aerogel – the world's lightest solid, capable of blocking high levels of heat and also insulating from the cold.

As he made his way up the mountain, Markesbery felt hampered by his bulky jacket and yearned for something thinner and more flexible.

A thought popped into his head: Could aerogel achieve that?

Today 22-year-old Markesbery thinks he's got an answer – and a great product.

In coming months he and his business partners will attempt to claim a piece of the competitive outerwear market with a new line of jackets under the brand name Lukla, named for the small town in Nepal where adventurers land on their way to Mount Everest.

"We picked Lukla because it's the starting point," Markesbery says.

"It represents the beginning of an adventure," co-founder Rithvik Venna adds.

Lukla's success thus far has been possible because of Miami's Institute for Entrepreneurship, the young men say, where they received business and marketing training and advice from a wide array of mentors. These young men are already beating the odds, one professor said, as only one or two students generally graduates with a product or service for sale.

Other companies that have tried aerogel in jackets have failed, but the minds behind Lukla think they've worked out a solution.

A friendship born on a Kings Island bus ride

Sitting in a conference room inside the stately Farmer School of Business on the Oxford campus, Markesbery, Venna and a third partner, Massimiliano "Max" Squire, joyfully recount how their paths crossed to pave the way for Lukla.

Venna was born in India, but lived most of his first five years in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates Then he moved to the Cleveland area, where he grew up and attended high school. Venna, also a zoology major, and Markesbery became friends during their sophomore year of college in an organic chemistry class.

Squire was born in Belgium. His father worked for Procter & Gamble and the family moved to Spain, then England, then Switzerland and, lastly, the United States.

Markesbery and Squire met in sixth grade on the bus ride home from Kings Island while both were students at Indian Hill Middle School. They've been friends ever since and were together on the Swiss Alps trip when Markesbery began pondering aerogel in outerwear.

That following winter, Markesbery and Venna were on their way to a final exam, when Markesbery mentioned his idea.

"We're both self-proclaimed nerds. We love science," Venna says. "I thought it was really cool."

In their free time, they began learning all they could about aerogel, ordering various samples from a company in South Korea and eventually looping in Squire, who was earning a business degree at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.

Aerogel: Not just for NASA anymore

Today aerogel is used to insulate space shuttles, the Mars rover, some of the world's tallest skyscrapers and oil pipelines.

It can prevent ice from building up on airplanes, collect comet dust and the U.S. Navy is exploring the use of aerogel in wet suits.

The material was invented by American scientist and chemical engineer Samuel Stephens Kistler sometime around 1930, but it wasn't used in commercial products until the 1950s.

True to its name, aerogel is mostly air. The type Lukla uses is between 97 to 99.9 percent air, Markesbery explains. But unlike its moniker, aerogel is a solid, not a soft or gooey gel.

Markesbery hands over a piece of silica aerogel, the most common kind. It's light weight and very brittle, almost completely translucent.

Aerogel exhibits an uncanny mix of scientific properties, Venna and Markesbery explain.

It has the lowest density of any known solid, making it very light. In fact, it would take 150 brick-sized pieces of aerogel to weigh as much as a single gallon of water, according to the open-source nanotech website aerogel.org.

Aerogel also has the highest surface area of any non-powder material and has a very low thermal conductivity. The thermal conductivity and its porousness are key to Lukla's technology, Venna says.

"Imagine 2 mm of aerogel, something the thickness of a napkin," Markesbery says. "Now take a flame thrower or liquid nitrogen, (the latter of) which is around minus-321 degrees Fahrenheit. Blast it onto the side of the aerogel and put your hand firmly on the other side. Your hand remains at body temperature."

Markesbery later performed a similar experiment with liquid nitrogen in a Lukla jacket.

"Imagine taking that technology and putting it into outerwear, so now you can wear a thin jacket, climb Mount Everest and be totally warm," he says.

The pockets of air keep the cold from transferring in, but also prevents body heat from transferring out. Other companies have made attempts to create an aerogel-insulated jacket, but it has led to overheating. Lukla gets around this problem by spacing out the aerogel panels and incorporating vents that can be unzipped under the arms, Markesbery explains.

Finding their way into the outerwear market

So how do two zoology majors go from an idea to production?

Fortunately, Miami's Institute for Entrepreneurship – ranked in the Top 25 best undergraduate entrepreneurship programs by Entrepreneur magazine and Princeton Review – welcomes students from other majors. The institute currently has 1,000 students representing 89 majors, says Mark Lacker, a marketing professor in the program.

The entrepreneurship program, which began in 1992, has become more popular of late, Lacker said, doubling in size in the last five years.

"These guys have been curious and persistent," Lacker says of the Lukla team, adding that only a handful of students each year graduate from the program with a product on the market or a new service already launched.

"Every time they encountered a question or problem, they had either gone to someone or done research to find a way around it," Lacker says. "That effort and resourcefulness to keep going is what defines successful entrepreneurs."

The jackets are designed by Michael T. Maiello, who studied at Politecnico di Milano in Milan. They are manufactured in China and have been tested by a mountaineer in Argentina, a snowmobiler in Northern Michigan and someone backpacking across Europe.

Liz Rovira, an avid outdoorswoman, recently tried the jacket while skiing in Vail, Colorado.

"I've worn all kinds of jackets with all kinds of insulation," Rovira said. "It was surprisingly comfortable."

The jacket breathed well, Rovira said and she appreciated the feminine cut, which she said some other jackets don't achieve.

"It felt good," Rovira said. "I liked the style."

Lukla is stepping into a competitive market, according to an outerwear trend report for 2015 by TransWorld Business, which reported that outerwear sales were down 4 percent last year, though sales often correlate with snow fall and the last two years have been below normal.

"Consensus is that things have gotten tougher, with manufacturing costs on the rise and little room for error," the report reads. "Brands are working harder than ever to streamline their production processes, differentiate themselves and work with retailers to drive sell-though and maintain high customer value."

Lukla must stand out, Squire said.

All of Lukla's efforts thus far have been self-funded, either with scholarships or personal finances, but in March the company will launch its first line – Endeavour – along with a Kickstarter campaign to raise $80,000. Jackets range from $250-$400.

One day, Markesbery hopes to fly into Lukla and break the record for the longest stay on the summit of Mount Everest wearing Lukla outerwear.

"We're not a corporate entity; making money isn't the bottom line," Markesbery said. "We aren't suits. We are students who like to go out and play."