Nina Kritikos serves as Founding Process Engineer at Rise Reforming, a Chicago-based cleantech startup converting unrecyclable plastic waste and biogas into carbon-negative chemicals like dimethyl ether (DME) and methanol.

Nina joined Rise Reforming as the company's very first hire, bringing critical process engineering expertise as the team established its R&D operations at Illinois Institute of Technology's incubator lab.

Nina is a key member of the VentureWell Summer 2025 E-Team cohort alongside CEO George Rose, working under Principal Investigator Mark Stoykovich at the University of Chicago to advance the company's modular chemical conversion technology.

Rise Reforming secured a pre-seed round of $650K and has raised over $1.06M in total, backed by UChicago accelerators and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, with Nina driving the process engineering behind the company's proof-of-concept and pilot plant plans.

The team won first place in the DOE EnergyTech University Prize 2024 and took home the European Aerosols Federation 2025 Start-Up Award, with Rise Reforming targeting a market opportunity of over $20B annually in domestic biogas-derived chemical production.