UMD receives 2 IARPA RESILIENCE awards

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the research and development arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, announced a multi-year research effort called the Robust Energy Sources for Intelligence Logistics In Extreme, Novel and Challenging Environments (RESILIENCE) program. The goal of the RESILIENCE program is to assure maximum power source reliability in extreme conditions (often for years) where recharging is not possible.

Planned research tracks include: high power density and high energy density batteries for applications such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and batteries with long calendar life, super-high reliability, and a small size for field-based electronics. University of Maryland (UMD) researchers are members of two of the 8 projects selected for the RESILIENCE PROGRAM. UMD is the only university to receive multiple awards.

The first award, “High-energy and high-power batteries using multi-functional electrolytes and conversion cathodes”, will be led on the UMD side by Dr. Paul Albertus, Associate Director for the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute (MEI²) and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) Assistant Professor, and Dr. Chunsheng Wang, MEI²/CHBE professor and Director of the Center for Research in Extreme Batteries (CREB). Saft America is the lead on the overall project, and the University of California, San Diego, and Northrup Grumman are additional partners. The team will work on both high specific energy and power primary cells (Track 1) and high specific energy and long calendar life second cells (Track 2), and is one of only two teams chosen to work on both Tracks.

The second award, “Long calendar life high energy solid-state batteries”, will be led by Dr. Chunsheng Wang. The project will work on Track 2, with Solid Power as the overall project lead.

Published October 7, 2021