Dr. Dan Steingart, Stanley-Thompson Professor of Chemical Metallurgy
Professor of Chemical Engineering
Chair, Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering

Of Density and Destiny: Listening, and Really Listening, to Batteries

Abstract: The conservation of mass and charge within a closed-form electrochemical energy cell (”battery”) is fundamental to our standing of chemical transport and reaction kinetics within a system. Since the volume of a battery must be constrained (though not necessarily conserved), the **density** and **density distribution** of the evolving battery contain state information about the system. In this talk, I will discuss our group’s effort to understand these changes and exploit this perspective to resolve battery state of charge, state of health, chemo-structural evolution, and reaction heterogeneity.

Bio:  Dan Steingart is the Stanley Thompson Professor of Chemical Metallurgy, the Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, and a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Climate School. He is also co-director of the Columbia Electrochemical Energy Center. His group studies the systematic behaviors of material deposition, conversion, and dissolution in electrochemical reactors, with a focus on energy storage devices. His current research focuses on traditional failure mechanisms and interactions in battery and material production, converting unwanted behaviors into beneficial mechanisms. 

Various industries have adopted his efforts in this area over the last decade, leading directly to four privately backed start-up efforts, Voltaiq, Liminal Insights, Innate Energy, and Standard Potential, and indirectly to a few others. 

Steingart currently sits on the Board of Directors of T1 Energy. He served as Chief Scientist of Electra while on leave from Columbia in AY21-22. He joined Columbia Engineering in 2019 from Princeton University, where he was an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. Earlier, he was an assistant professor in chemical engineering at the City College of the City University of New York. Even earlier, he was an engineer at two energy-related startups. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2006.