Advances in Battery Research 2024

Wei Lu is a Full Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and Director of research center: Advanced Battery Coalition for Drivetrains. He received his B.S. from Tsinghua University and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. Prof. Lu uses multi-scale and multi-physics modeling and experimental approaches to address challenges in energy. He has more than 180 journal publications in high impact peer-reviewed journals and 200 presentations and invited talks in international conferences, universities and national labs including Harvard, MIT and Stanford. He also has plenty of publications in conference proceedings, encyclopedias and book chapters. Prof. Lu was the recipient of many awards including the CAREER award by the US National Science Foundation; the Robert J. McGrattan Award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; Elected Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; Robert M. Caddell Memorial Research Achievement Award; Faculty Recognition Award; Department Achievement Award; Novelis/CoE Distinguished Professor Award; CoE Ted Kennedy Family Faculty Team Excellence Award; CoE Creative, Innovative, Daring Award; CoE George J. Huebner, Jr. Research Excellence Award; and the Gustus L Larson Memorial Award by American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He was recognized as academics in the top 2% in the discipline of energy (a study from Stanford University science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators and top 2% is the highest in the study). He was invited to the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative Conference multiple times.

Dania Ghantous is the Co-founder and VP of Technology at Qnovo, the market leader in enabling software defined batteries. She has over 25 years of experience in technology development related to materials, batteries, and computation algorithms. A battery scientist at heart, Dania’s innovations and unique understanding of lithium-ion batteries enables her to recognize the theoretical promise of new materials and technology yet distill it into practical implementations that can be readily commercialized. Dania’s team develops the core battery science behind Qnovo’s battery management algorithms. Prior to Qnovo, Dania served in leadership roles developing advanced materials and batteries at Imara, Greatbatch and NanoGram Devices. She is an inventor on more than 50 patents on battery technology. She is recognized as one of the Top 100 Women of Influence in Silicon Valley and is a recipient of the Women’s World Awards for Excellence in Industry Women of the Year in Engineering and Technology. Dania holds a bachelor of science and master of science degrees in Chemical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology. She enjoys traveling when she can, watching the Golden State Warriors, and solving all types of puzzles.

Prof. Xiulei “David” Ji is the Bert and Emelyn Christensen Professor of Chemistry at Oregon State University. His research interests pertain to the design principles of battery chemistry for energy storage. He has been a Highly Cited Researcher of the Web of Science Group since 2019, with total citations of over 37,000 and an H-index of 85 (Google Scholar). He received the NSF CAREER Award (2016). He was a Scialog Fellow by Research Corporation for Science Advancement. He is currently an Associate Editor of Carbon Energy, a Wiley journal. He obtained his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Jilin University in 2003 and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Waterloo in 2009. During 2010-2012, he was an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Jeroen has worked as an Atomic Spectroscopy Product Specialist at Agilent since 2019, Covering the Benelux and Nordics region for technical expertise on AAS, MP-AES, ICP-OES and ICP-MS. Jeroen's background is in an environmental laboratory where he worked with ICP-OES and ICP-MS for over 10 years.

Simon Nelms is a former ICP-OES and ICP-MS applications specialist who’s been part of the Thermo Fisher Scientific team for more than 20 years. He is now a Vertical Marketing Manager with a specific focus on analytical applications in the Clean Energy sector. Simon holds a BSc in Analytical Chemistry and a PhD in research involving ICP-MS method development from the University or Hull, UK and has postdoctoral experience in isotope dilution metrology from the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Geel, Belgium.

Gerlinde Wita is the European Product Line Leader for Material Characterization with a strong focus on materials and energy markets at PerkinElmer based in Austria. She trained as a chemical engineer and prior to her current role was the global market leader for materials & energy markets at PerkinElmer for many years.

Jeff Spangenberger is the Materials Recycling R&D Group Lead in the Applied Materials Division at Argonne National Laboratory. His group works to solve material separation, recovery, and recycling challenges resulting in cost effective and environmentally sustainable processes that are then transferrable to industry. Jeff is also the director of the ReCell center, an advanced battery recycling program, funded by the Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office, to evaluate and advance the cost effective and sustainable recycling of end-of-life batteries.

Dr. Darren H. S. Tan is the CEO & Co-Founder of UNIGRID Battery, a spin-out startup from the Sustainable Power & Energy Center at University of California, San Diego. He is currently leading the UNIGRID team in commercializing next generation advanced sodium ion batteries for the emerging energy storage markets.

Dr. Jan Singer is Head of Battery Research and Modeling at TWAICE, where his primary focus is working on laboratory measurements and battery models. Before he joined TWAICE in 2019, he was a Research Associate at the Chair for Electrical Energy Storage Systems, Institute for Photovoltaics, University of Stuttgart, Germany. During his Ph.D. studies under the supervision of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kai Peter Birke, he focused on the detection of electrochemical effects induced by volume strains and the development of new non-destructive characterization methods for lithium-ion cells. He started his professional career in 2006 as mechatronic technician at Harman/Becker Automotive Systems. In 2012, he received his Bachelor’s degree from University of Applied Sciences Ulm and graduated with an M.Sc. from University of Stuttgart in 2015.

Linda Gaines is a Transportation Systems Analyst in the Energy Systems and Infrastructure Analysis Division at Argonne National Laboratory. She holds a BA in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Columbia. Her primary interest is problem solving, applied to efficient use of resources. She began her career at Argonne by writing a series of handbooks of energy and material flows in energy-intensive industries that provided background for studies of technical and institutional issues involved in producing and recycling advanced-design automobiles, trucks, and trains, and batteries. Her most recent work has involved studying ways to reduce impacts from transport by recycling of lithium-ion batteries. She is an editor of the journal Sustainable Materials and Technologies and on the Editorial Board of Scientific Reports (a Nature journal).