Science Discussion Series: Batteries seem to power everything today-
cell phones, cars, homes, even airplanes! We are a team of scientists
and engineers working on batteries and energy storage, let’s discuss!
Abstract
Hello Reddit! We are a group of scientists and engineers in academia and
industry working on batteries and energy storage. Batteries are
ubiquitous in our daily lives and we all have complained about them when
using our favorite portable electronic devices. They are also critical
in enabling the next generation of electric vehicles, such as electric
cars and electric airplanes, and large-scale stationary energy storage.
Let’s discuss anything regarding batteries and other energy storage
technologies! Our guests today are: Kristin Persson (u/KPatBerkeley): I
am an Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at UC
Berkeley, and I direct the Materials Project which is a
multi-institution, multi-national effort to compute the properties of
all inorganic materials and provide the data and associated analysis
algorithms to the world. The Persson group uses their expertise in
materials informatics and the high-throughput infrastructure of the
Materials Project to design novel photocatalysts, multi-valent battery
electrode materials, Li-ion battery electrode materials and electrolytes
for beyond-Li energy storage solutions. Twitter: @KPatBerkeley Shirley
Meng (u/ShirleyMeng): I received my Ph.D. in Advance Materials for Micro
& Nano Systems from the Singapore-MIT Alliance in 2005, after which I
worked as a postdoc research fellow and became a research scientist at
MIT. I currently hold the Zable Chair Professor in Energy Technologies
and professor in NanoEngineering at University of California San Diego
(UCSD), and am the principal investigator of the Laboratory for Energy
Storage and Conversion (LESC) research group. The LESC research focuses
on the direct integration of experimental techniques with first
principles computation modeling for developing new materials and
architectures for electrochemical energy storage. I am the founding
Director of Sustainable Power and Energy Center (SPEC), consisting
faculty members from interdisciplinary fields, who all focus on making
breakthroughs in distributed energy generation, storage and the
accompanying integration-management systems. I have received several
prestigious awards, including International Battery Association Research
Award (2019), Blavatnik National Awards Finalist (2018), American
Chemical Society ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces Young Investigator
Award (2018), International Coalition for Energy Storage and Innovation
(ICESI) Inaugural Young Career Award (2018), IUMRS-Singapore Young
Scientist Research Award (2017), C.W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of
the Electrochemical Society (2016), BASF Volkswagen Electrochemistry
Science Award (2015) and NSF CAREER Award (2011). I’ve published more
than 170 peer-reviewed journal articles, two book chapters and eight
patents, and am the elected Fellow of the Electrochemical Society. Ray
Smith (u/thatkindofcell): I did a PhD in battery modeling at MIT
focusing on active materials that exhibit phase changes during the
charging and discharging process. Now, I do battery modeling research
and development work at a San Francisco Bay Area company with particular
focus on cell design, charging, and degradation processes. Matt Lacey
(u/MattLacey): I graduated from the University of Southampton, United
Kingdom, with a Master of Chemistry degree in 2008 and completed my PhD
at the same university in 2012 under the supervision of Prof John R.
Owen. I joined the Ångström Advanced Battery Centre in 2012 as a postdoc
working on lithium-sulfur batteries, and in 2016 became a researcher in
the same group. Since 2018 I am also a thematic researcher with the
Swedish Electromobility Centre. My research interests centre on the
electrochemistry of lithium batteries, particularly on ageing
mechanisms. Twitter: @mjlacey Venkat Viswanathan (u/venkvis): I am
faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, working on batteries for
electrifying cars, trucks and planes. Find out more – Twitter:
@venkvis; website: http://andrew.cmu.edu/~venkatv Dan
Steingart (u/steingart): I am the Stanley Thompson Associate Professor
of Chemical Metallurgy in the Departments of Earth and Environmental
Engineering and Chemical Engineering at Columbia University, and the
co-director of the Columbia Electrochemical Energy Center. My group
studies the systematic behavior of electrochemical cells. You may be
familiar with my study on the (on-linear) bouncing behavior of AA cells.
Twitter: @steingart; websites: https://dansteingart.com/,
https://ceec.engineering.columbia.edu/ Thank you so much for joining us!
We will be around throughout the day, though mostly in the afternoon
EST, to discuss energy storage with you!