Isabel Pulido’s Cool Innovation
One afternoon in rural Colombia, Isabel Pulido watched a mother throw away half-eaten beans and rice. The family had no refrigerator—not because they couldn’t afford one, but because they had no reliable electricity. “I realized then that the biggest problem wasn’t just access to power,” Pulido recalls. “It was about food security, nutrition, and wasted income. These families were trapped in a cycle where 40% of their harvested food would rot before it could be eaten.”
That observation launched Pulido on a venture that would challenge conventional refrigeration technology—a sector that has remained nearly unchanged for a century, and which currently contributes 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
When Inspiration Strikes: A Problem Worth Solving
As a biochemistry student at Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá with a minor in design, Pulido was fulfilling a course requirement when she joined a field research team investigating living conditions in Colombia’s rural off-grid communities.
Though she doesn’t use the term design thinking, Pulido’s process applies its principles consistently. “My design professors always emphasized starting with empathy—understanding the people you’re designing for before jumping to solutions,” she explains.
“1.4 billion people worldwide lack reliable refrigeration,” Pulido explains. “Without cold storage, families can’t preserve food, clinics can’t store vaccines, and farmers lose up to half their harvest before it reaches market.”
The standard solutions—solar refrigerators, propane-powered units, or traditional ice boxes—each came with prohibitive drawbacks: high upfront costs, ongoing fuel expenses, or the need for regular ice delivery.
Looking to Nature for Answers
Back at university, Pulido became obsessed with finding a solution. “I kept thinking: nature must have solved this problem already,” she says. Her design training had taught her to look for existing patterns she could adapt rather than inventing from scratch.
The breakthrough came during a biophysics lecture on antifreeze proteins—specialized molecules that help Arctic fish survive in sub-zero waters by controlling ice crystal formation. “I had this moment where everything connected. If certain proteins can prevent freezing, could others enhance it?”
This question led her to discover that certain bacteria produce ice-nucleating proteins (INPs)—molecules that help ice freeze at higher temperatures. These proteins, found in Pseudomonas syringae, serve as templates for water molecules to organize into ice crystals.
What’s fascinating isn’t just that these proteins exist in nature, but that Pulido immediately saw their practical applications. While most researchers might have published a paper about such findings, she built a prototype instead, another key design thinking mindset.
That prototype—a vaccine carrier lined with a gel containing bacterial proteins—kept temperatures stable for 26 hours longer than conventional ice packs while using 40% less energy to freeze.
Engineering at the Nanoscale
Commercializing a bacterial protein wasn’t straightforward. “Everyone told me it couldn’t scale,” Pulido laughs. “Too expensive to produce, too difficult to stabilize, too many regulatory hurdles.”
Rather than give up, Pulido assembled a multidisciplinary team. Their breakthroughs came on multiple fronts:
First, they developed a synthetic biology approach to produce the proteins in engineered yeast—reducing production costs by 80%.
Second, they created a nanoscale delivery system that stabilizes the proteins and extends their active life from weeks to years. This process builds on classical nucleation theory. It describes how ice crystals form around small particles. Some substances like water can remain liquid below their freezing points until a “seed” triggers crystallization.
The technical challenge wasn’t just making the technology work once in laboratory conditions. Her real breakthrough was creating a solution that could survive shipping, storage in tropical conditions, and repeated freeze-thaw cycles while remaining affordable enough for widespread adoption.
The resulting technology works through three mechanisms:
- Nucleation enhancement: The engineered bio-nanoparticles need less energy for ice to form, allowing water to freeze at temperatures up to 15°F higher than normal
- Thermal conductivity: The bio-nanocomposite gel transfers heat more efficiently, reducing the energy required for cooling by up to 50%
- Crystal stabilization: Controlled freezing creates denser ice that melts more slowly, keeping products cold twice as long
When incorporated into their first products—cooling panels for existing refrigerators and standalone cooling containers—the technology reduces energy consumption by 40-75% while eliminating dependence on harmful synthetic refrigerants.
Real-World Impact
By 2023, NanoFreeze had moved beyond prototypes to pilot implementations. In partnership with Médecins Sans Frontières, they deployed 200 vaccine carriers to rural health clinics in Colombia and Kenya, maintaining stable temperatures for 72+ hours without electricity.
These vaccine carriers solve what the World Health Organization calls the “last mile problem” in vaccine distribution. Traditional cold chain systems break down in remote locations, but NanoFreeze’s bio-nanocomposite materials maintain critical temperatures between 2-8°C even in tropical conditions.
A partnership with a Colombian grocery chain showed even more dramatic results: retrofitting conventional refrigerators with NanoFreeze panels reduced energy consumption by 63% while extending the shelf life of produce by 4.2 days. Across 15 stores, this prevented 22 tons of food waste and saved over 140,000 kWh of electricity in one year.
Pulido embeds her commitment to solving social and environmental challenges in both her technology and her business model. Unlike many profit-focused tech startups, Pulido structured NanoFreeze as a BIC (Benefit and Collective Interest Company) in Colombia. This legal framework requires companies to include social and environmental benefits in their corporate purpose and mandates transparent reporting on these impacts. This legal designation—similar to B Corps in other countries—commits the company to generating positive social and environmental impact alongside financial returns.
Expanding Applications
While NanoFreeze began with food preservation and vaccine transport, the underlying technology has applications beyond conventional refrigeration. Pulido’s team is exploring partnerships with medical researchers for tissue preservation and regenerative medicine.
The controlled freezing process that NanoFreeze enables is promising for the cryopreservation of biological materials. Traditional freezing methods cause unpredictable ice crystal formation that damages cell structures, but NanoFreeze’s precise nucleation control could improve cell viability rates after thawing, according to biologists.
Early laboratory tests suggest tissues preserved using NanoFreeze technology show 28% less cellular damage than those preserved with standard methods.
Design Thinking in Action
Pulido’s approach embodies the core principles of design thinking, reflecting her two emphases at her university. The traditional technology innovation model often follows a “build something cool, then find a market for it” approach. What Pulido did was the opposite—she started with human needs, then developed technology specifically to serve those needs. Pulido’s method represents the essence of design thinking.
The six stages of design thinking for social impact [^1]—notice/reflect, empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and tests are core practices of the NanoFreeze team. From Pulido’s initial observations in Colombian villages to defining specific cooling challenges, brainstorming bio-inspired solutions, rapidly prototyping early versions, and continually testing with real users, her process shows how design thinking can guide technological innovation.
What’s remarkable about Pulido’s approach is how she balances rigorous technical expertise with human-centered design principles. Her dual background in biochemistry and design allowed her to bridge disciplines in ways that purely technical innovators often miss. This interdisciplinary approach represents a powerful model for addressing complex global challenges.
A Timely Innovation
Pulido’s innovations arrive at a critical moment. The International Energy Agency projects that by 2050, cooling technologies could consume 30% of global electricity without significant efficiency improvements. As climate change accelerates, the demand for cooling will only increase.
We’re caught in a vicious cycle: traditional cooling technologies contribute to the very global warming that increases demand for more cooling. Breaking this cycle requires different technological solutions like Pulido’s.
NanoFreeze represents one such approach, but Pulido acknowledges it’s not a silver bullet. “Technology alone won’t solve climate change or food insecurity. We need policy changes, infrastructure investments, and shifts in consumption patterns.”
As NanoFreeze expands from three countries to its targeted twelve by 2026, Pulido remains focused on the communities that inspired her work. “Success isn’t measured in dollars or even carbon offsets,” she insists. “It’s measured in people who can now preserve their harvests, children who receive life-saving vaccines, and communities that become more resilient against climate disruptions.”
Bridging Science and Society
Pulido’s work represents more than just a technological breakthrough—it exemplifies how bridging disciplinary boundaries can address complex challenges that neither science nor design could solve in isolation. Her approach shows that meaningful innovation happens not just in high-tech laboratories but at the intersection of scientific knowledge and human needs.
As climate change intensifies and global inequality persists, Pulido’s model of innovation offers an inspiring path forward. By starting with empathy, drawing inspiration from natural systems, and designing solutions that consider both technical feasibility and human context, she shows how science can directly serve humanity’s most pressing challenges.
For Pulido, cooling isn’t just about temperature—it’s about creating a more equitable and sustainable world, one ice crystal at a time.
For Pulido, cooling isn’t just about temperature—it’s about creating a more equitable and sustainable world, one ice crystal at a time.
[^1]: Based on the six-stage model outlined in “Design Thinking: A Guide to Innovation,” which adapts traditional design thinking specifically for social impact projects.
Read more about young changemakers in Teen Innovators: Nine Young People Engineering a Better World with Creative Inventions.
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