DURHAM — StoryDriven announces that the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Nashville/Midsouth Chapter, recognized its partner, UNC Research Opportunities Initiative (ROI), for excellence in visual storytelling with an Emmy Award on Saturday, Jan. 20, in Nashville, Tenn. StoryDriven is a Durham-based Emmy Award-winning storytelling firm, specializing in human-centered mini-documentaries.
“The competition this year was fierce – there were more than 900 entries this year from 131 different production companies and television stations across the region – so we were thrilled to receive four nominations and to win one award,” said Nathan Clendenin, Founder and CEO of StoryDriven.
The Academy recognized UNC ROI’s “Harvesting Clean Energy” video with an Emmy Award in the Technology category. Specifically, the award is for excellence in coverage of technology industry stories and related subject matter. The video’s first success was amassing more than 30k views on Facebook when it first launched.
“Harvesting Clean Energy” – fondly called “Pickle Power” – showcases the collaborative partnership between Mt. Olive Pickle Company in Mt Olive, NC State University, East Carolina University and UNC-Chapel Hill in exploring salinity gradient energy, an inexhaustible clean energy resource for North Carolina. A multi-university endeavor, the project seeks to harness salinity gradients for electricity generation, energy storage and wastewater treatment.
As the video shows, the brine waste from Mt. Olive Pickle Company proves an interesting opportunity for a mutually-beneficial partnership between academia and industry.
“UNC ROI, funded by the NC General Assembly, invests in strategically important research projects with the intention of fostering innovation and bringing about new ways of solving complex scientific challenges,” said Dr. Erin Hopper, former Research Director of UNC ROI and currently Associate Chair of the Department of Applied Physical Sciences at UNC. “These projects have the potential to promote economic development and position North Carolina as a leader in strategically important research areas. The video produced by StoryDriven does an excellent job showing how UNC ROI promotes important research that is creative, collaborative and cross disciplinary.”
To date, StoryDriven has earned more than 15 Emmy nominations and received eigh Emmy Awards. This year’s award-winning video can be found at the link below: “Harvesting Clean Energy” – UNC ROI http://www.wearestorydriven.com/portfolio/university-north-carolina-system-roi/