Lee Lorenzen is the Founder and CEO of Cluster Solutions, a California-based company he established in 1989 to develop and advance clustered water technology. Born and raised in Northern California as one of eight children, Lorenzen built his career across biology, pharmacology, and over a decade of independent biomedical consulting before founding the company that would define the rest of his professional life.
His educational foundation includes a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley, graduate studies in biology at California State University, Fullerton, and advanced research under Hoang Van Duc, M.D. Early career roles at Chapman College and UC Irvine gave him direct experience in both academic science and applied pharmacological research.
Over more than three decades, Lorenzen has secured multiple U.S. patents and led a fifteen-year collaborative research program in Japan involving thousands of patients. More than 300,000 people in Japan now consume clustered water solutions. In 2011, the Microsoft Alumni Foundation recognized his research contributions related to AIDS and diabetes. He continues to lead Cluster Solutions from Rancho Santa Margarita, California, focused on research, product development, and the real-world outcomes his work produces.
Lee Lorenzen on Success, Perseverance, and the Long Work of Science
How do you define success in your own career?:
Success, for me, is not a destination. It is the condition of continuing to improve the product and seeing that improvement reflected in how people feel. When someone uses what we have developed and their quality of life gets better, that is the measure I return to. Everything else — the patents, the recognition — those matter, but they are not the definition.
Was there a moment early on when you realized this would be a long road?:
Early on, when I brought the research to institutions that I expected would be interested, they were not. The response was skepticism, even dismissal. I understood it — the idea that water’s molecular structure could have a meaningful effect on health was not something the mainstream model was ready to absorb. That experience told me very quickly that this would not be a short path. You either accept that and keep going, or you stop.
What did you do when the industry and competitors pushed back?:
I kept developing. When the scientific community doubts you and institutional doors close, the only real response is more rigorous validation. We went to Japan, worked with physicians and researchers over fifteen years, built a body of evidence that did not depend on anyone accepting our word for it. The work had to speak for itself. That is the only way through sustained opposition.
What role did failure play in building Cluster Solutions?:
Every dead end in the research taught us something. When a formulation did not produce the outcome we expected, we analyzed why. When a clinical approach did not yield clear results, we redesigned it. I would not frame those as failures — I would frame them as the actual process of science. The problem comes when people expect science to be linear. It is not. It loops back constantly.
How do you maintain discipline over a project that spans decades?:
Trusted relationships help. I have worked alongside physicians and scientists who understand the rigor required and who push back when something is not right. That kind of accountability matters enormously. You cannot sustain a long project alone. The collaboration is not incidental to the work — it is part of what makes the work credible.
What habits have supported your long-term productivity?:
Staying close to the science. I read constantly. I stay current with what researchers are finding in related fields. And I pay close attention to the feedback from people who are using our products. That feedback is not secondary information — it is as important as any lab result, because it tells you what is actually happening in the real world.
What tradeoffs have you made to sustain this level of focus?:
There are things I have accepted that I cannot quantify — time, uncertainty, years when the financial picture did not match the effort we were putting in. But I also understood early that I was working on something that had a direct bearing on people’s health. That is not a small thing. When the work is connected to something that fundamental, you find a way to sustain the tradeoffs.
What does success look like from where you sit today?:
It looks like continued research. It looks like products that perform better than they did a year ago. It looks like hearing from someone whose experience has genuinely changed. We are not finished. As long as the science keeps moving forward and the outcomes keep improving, that is success. The goal was never a finish line. It was the ongoing quality of the work.