California Battery Manufacturing Summit
Dr. Gao Liu is a Senior Scientist and Group Leader of the Applied Energy Materials Group in the Energy Storage and Distributed Resources Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). His current research is focused on polymers to improve lithium battery energy density, increase life, and lower cost. He leads multiple DOE and privately funded projects while also collaborating with companies to commercialize new battery technologies. He has contributed to over 200 refereed journal articles and his work has been published in notable journals including Advanced Materials, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Natural Energy. He has received national and international awards including three R&D 100 Awards and holds twenty-seven patents.
Vince Battaglia heads the Electrochemical Energy Storage Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The Group overall consists of six experts in battery science ranging from material synthesis and characterization, to advanced diagnostics of cell performance, to electrode fabrication and battery design. Recently, his work has focused on the science of electrode fabrication of high loading battery electrodes using standard Li-ion battery materials and low loading catalyst layers for fuel cells and electrolyzers in pursuit of understanding the effects of solvent and solids content and processing procedures on final electrode performance. Vince has contributed to over 140 refereed journal articles, holds 10 patents, and is the co-author of three text books with Prof. John Newman in Applied Calculus, Thermodynamics, and Transport Phenomena.
Jianchao Ye is Staff Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His research lies in additive manufacturing for energy applications with special focus on batteries. Examples include architecting lithium battery components to achieve high power densities, dry processing to reduce manufacturing cost, and high-volume manufacturing for solid state batteries to improve safety and energy density.
Marissa Wood received her B.A. in chemistry from Boston University in 2005. She worked briefly in biotech before completing her Ph.D. in materials chemistry at the University of Washington in 2014, where her graduate research focused on investigating nanoscale mass transport phenomena using electrochemical techniques. She then joined ORNL as a postdoc, where she worked at the Battery Manufacturing Facility developing processing methods for low-cost, high-energy-density Li-ion batteries, including aqueous electrode formulations and scalable approaches for fabricating thick architected electrodes. She came to LLNL in 2018 and is currently a staff scientist in the Materials Science Division, where her research focuses on controlling electrode architectures for better performance, improving the cyclability of Li metal anodes using carbon scaffold hosts, understanding solid electrolyte/cathode interfaces in solid-state batteries, and using novel processing techniques to decrease electrode manufacturing times.
Dr. Jagjit Nanda is an experienced senior R&D professional with a demonstrated history and record of working both in industry, national laboratory and academic settings. His career has focused on energy storage materials and systems with emphasis on lithium-ion, solid-state batteries and grid scale energy storage. He is currently a Distinguished Scientist at SLAC National Laboratory, Executive Director at SLAC-Stanford Battery Center, Adjunct Professor and Precourt Scholar at Stanford University. He is a Fellow of Electrochemical Society (ECS), Materials Research Society (MRS) and National Academy of Inventors.
Dr. Lynn Trahey leads energy and sustainability research initiatives at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Before her role at SLAC, Dr. Trahey led external and internal research integration efforts for the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research hub. She was a materials scientist engaged in advanced battery characterization at Argonne National Laboratory.
Johanna Nelson Weker is a lead scientist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Her research focuses on synchrotron-based X-ray characterization of energy materials and energy systems far from equilibrium. In addition to leading a vibrant research group, she helps run the transmission X-ray microscopy on beamline 6-2 at SSRL. Dr. Nelson Weker graduated in 2005 with a B.S. in mathematics and physics from Muhlenberg College, a small liberal arts college in Allentown, PA. In 2010, she received a Ph.D. in physics from Stony Brook University on Long Island, NY, where she studied Coherent Diffractive Imaging (CDI) with X-rays, a microscopy technique that eliminates the need for X-rays lenses. Since then, Dr. Nelson Weker has been working at the Stanford Synchrotron Lightsource, first as a postdoc using x-rays to study Li-ion batteries under operating conditions and later as a staff scientist in the Materials Science Division at SLAC. Dr. Nelson Weker recently received an Early Career Award from DOE to develop multiscale 3D imaging for battery pouch cells and other flat-geometry samples which do not image well using standard tomography techniques.