Event
CHBE Seminar: Dr. Shirley Meng, UChicago
Friday, April 11, 2025
11:00 a.m.
Room 2108 Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building
Patricia Lorenzana
301-405-1935
plorenza@umd.edu
Designing Better Materials and Systems for Future Batteries
Abstract: High energy long life rechargeable battery is considered as the key enabling technology for deep de-carbonization. Energy storage in the electrochemical form is attractive because of its high efficiency and fast response time. Besides the technological importance, electrochemical devices also provide a unique platform for fundamental and applied materials science & research since ion movement is often accompanied by inherent complex phenomena related to phase changes, electronic structure changes and defect generation. In this talk, I will discuss a few new perspectives for energy storage materials including new superionic conductors, new intercalation compounds and their interfacial engineering. With recent advances in photon and electron characterization tools and computational methods, we are able to explore ionic mobility, charge transfer and phase transformations in electrode and electrolyte materials in operando, and map out the structure-properties relations in novel functional metals, ceramics and soft materials for next generation energy storage and conversion. ESRA is an Energy Innovation Hub funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) focused on energy storage and next-generation battery discovery. ESRA aims to enable transformative discoveries in materials chemistry, gain a fundamental understanding of electrochemical phenomena at the atomic scale, lay the scientific foundations for breakthroughs in energy storage technologies, and train the next-generation battery workforce to ensure U.S. scientific and economic leadership.
Bio: Dr. Y. Shirley Meng is the Liew Family Professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. She serves as the Chief Scientist of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS) Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Meng is the director of Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA), an innovation hub funded by US Department of Energy, Office of Science.
She is the principal investigator of the research group - Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC), that was established at University of California San Diego since 2009. She held the Zable Chair Professor in Energy Technologies at UC San Diego from 2017-2022 and founded the Sustainable Power and Energy Center (SPEC) in 2016. Dr. Meng received several prestigious awards, including ACS Research Excellence in Electrochemistry (2024), ECS Battery Division Research Award (2023), the C3E technology and innovation award (2022), the Faraday Medal of Royal Chemistry Society (2020), International Battery Association IBA Research Award (2019), Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Finalist (2018), C.W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of the Electrochemical Society (2016) and NSF CAREER Award (2011). Dr. Meng is elected Fellow of Electrochemical Society (FECS), Fellow of Materials Research Society (FMRS) and Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She is the author and co-author of more than 320 peer-reviewed journal articles, two book chapters and twelve issued patents. Dr. Meng received her Ph.D. in Advance Materials for Micro & Nano Systems from the Singapore-MIT Alliance in 2005. She received her bachelor’s degree in Materials Science with first class honor from Nanyang Technological University of Singapore in 2000.
