Albertus, Paul
Associate Director
Maryland Energy Innovation Institute
EDUCATION:
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2009
PREVIOUS POSITIONS:
Program Director, Advanced Research Programs Agency - Energy, US Department of Energy, 2014-2018
Senior Research Engineer, Robert Bosch Research and Technology Center, Palo Alto, CA, 2009-2013
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
- Electrochemical technologies for energy storage and conversion, including the materials needed to enable advances.
- Lithium-ion, lithium metal, flow, and other battery systems.
- Electrolysis processes, including alkaline water electrolysis.
- Degradation and failure analysis.
- Continuum-scale mathematical modeling of electrochemical processes and devices.
- Thermodynamic, transport, and kinetic property measurements.
- Energy technology entrepreneurship and innovation, including energy system analysis to identify innovation opportunities.
PROGRAM CREATION AT ARPA-E:
At ARPA-E I led the creation of two new programs, here are links to the Funding Opportunity Announcements I wrote with my colleagues:
IONICS (solid separators for lithium metal batteries, alkaline electrolysis/fuel cells, and flow batteries)
DAYS (stationary energy storage systems with 10 to 100 hours at rated power)
Here are some of the projects we are working on and thinking about:
- Lithium metal electrode stability and performance.
- Coupling of mechanics with electrochemistry.
- Solid state battery safety, including (1) experimental work on the thermochemistry of the reactions that take place among Li battery components upon heating, and (2) modeling work to project how large-format Li metal batteries will behave upon heating and short circuiting.
- Performance and degradation of Li metal cells with conversion cathode materials (including primary cells).
- Electrochemical technologies for deep decarbonization.
- Mathematical modeling of coupled, non-linear electrochemical processes.
We greatly appreciate current funding support from agencies including DOE Basic Energy Sciences, DOE ARPA-E, the BIRD Foundation through the US-Israel Energy Center, CREB, and the IARPA RESILIENCE program.
CHBE473/CHBE673: Electrochemical Energy Engineering
CHBE422: Transport Phenomena I: Fluid Dynamics