2025 Spring Meeting

Binghamton-led New York State Initiatives Supporting Domestic & Allied Supply Chains for Advanced Energy Storage
ABSTRACT:  Upstate New York has received around $150M from the Economic Development Administration & National Science Foundation with matching funds from New York State to develop an ecosystem to enable “Batteries made in America by Americans”. These initiatives include the EDA Build Back Better Regional competition, the NSF Engine, and designation by EDA as America’s Energy Storage Tech Hub. Central to this effort is the Battery-NY prototyping facility that will contain two 30 MWh lines. This will be unique to the United States. Other critical efforts include a supply chain database (led by NYBEST), workforce training at all levels, and R&D and translation efforts.
Speaker: Stan Whittingham, Binghamton University & Nobel laureate

Critical Minerals State of Play for Battery Supply Chains
ABSTRACT:
Speaker: Alice Wu, Federation of American Scientists

Metrology Challenges in Evaluating Secondary Materials from End-of-Life Batteries 
ABSTRACT:
Speaker: Jamie Weaver, National Institute of Standards & Technology

Enabling Extreme Low Temperature Discharge in Molicel 18650 Cells
ABSTRACT:
Speaker: Brian Way, Molicel

Emergence of the North American Battery Supply Chain
ABSTRACT:
Speaker: Alex Schlichting, MITRE Labs

Building a US-supply chain in a world of bespoke materials
ABSTRACT: Forge Battery is a US cell manufacturer that has grown out of Forge Nano, known for commercializing a nano-coating technique called Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), as a result of growing demand for advanced Li-ion batteries with US sourcing. This presentation will review the landscape of the US Li-ion technology adoption cycle, the difficulties with integrating Li-ion innovations at scale, and how the US can work towards faster commercial adoption of new technologies.
Speaker: Brian Pennington, Forge Nano

Enhanced VALidation of advanced battery Supply chains: accelerating the path of domestic materials into the domestic supply chain
ABSTRACT:  EVALS is a consortium funded by the Vehicle Technologies Office at DOE involving Idaho National Lab, Argonne National Lab, and National Renewable Energy Lab. The goal of EVALS is to fully develop a suite of tools that support domestic electric vehicle manufacturing through evaluation of domestic primary resources and acceleration of their path to domestic material and battery production. This talk will focus on describing the EVALS project and discussing initial results regarding domestic LiFePO4 precursor sourcing and impacts on the domestic manufacturing supply chain.
Speaker: Katie Harrison, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Powering Partnerships in the Global Battery Supply Chain
ABSTRACT: This presentation explores how strategic partnerships can be leveraged to secure supply chains for lithium-ion and nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) batteries, which are essential to a range of applications—from grid storage and electric vehicles to consumer electronics and national defense. The session will examine key challenges in scaling domestic production of critical battery minerals such as lithium, cobalt, manganese, and graphite, as well as the geopolitical hurdles involved in diversifying sources. It will also highlight how targeted trade policy and international agreements can play a pivotal role in building a more resilient and secure battery supply chain.
Speaker: Mahnaz Khan, Silverado Policy Accelerator

Rational Design of Battery Cathode Materials to Battery Cell Prototyping at BEACONS
ABSTRACT: Cho will discuss how to design high capacity cathode materials for LIB and Li SSB with subsequent experimental validation. DFT modeling enables us to understand atomic and electronic structure mechanisms of high-Ni layered oxide cathode materials degradation and to develop practical design strategies to overcome the degradation mechanisms. Such design insights are tested by experimental studies with material synthesis and coin cell tests. Autonomous material synthesis and large format cell testing are underway using the BEACONS battery R&D line facility.
Speaker: KJ Cho, University of Texas at Dallas

Stan Whittingham
Stan Whittingham is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering at Binghamton University. He was the 2019 Chemistry Nobel Laureate for the discovery of lithium rechargeable batteries, and the 2023 VinFutures Grand Prize winner. He leads the Battery-NY economic development effort and is the Chief Innovation Officer of the NSF Upstate New York Energy Storage Engine.  He is a founding member of NYBEST, and Vice-Chair for Research, and Chief Scientific Officer of NAATBatt.

Alice Wu

Jamie Weaver

Brian Way

Alex Schlichting

Brian Pennington

Mahnaz Khan
 Mahnaz Khan is Vice President of Policy for Critical Supply Chains at Silverado Policy Accelerator, a bipartisan geopolitical think tank. In this role, she regularly writes and speaks on advancing innovative, bipartisan policy solutions and shaping strategic trade policy frameworks to strengthen supply chain resilience—with a particular focus on critical minerals. She also serves as a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center. Prior to joining Silverado in 2024, she spent 14 years as a career civil servant in trade policy at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. International Trade Commission, and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Katie Harrison
Katie Harrison manages the Battery Materials Group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). She researched batteries at Sandia National Laboratories for 11 years before coming to NREL. Her research has focused on synthesizing and characterizing a wide variety of battery materials. Her current research focuses on silicon anodes for electric vehicles, lithium titanate batteries for behind the meter storage, and the impact of impurities on battery performance to enable domestic supply chains.

Thomas Greszler

Brian Engle

Kyeongjae Cho

José Collazo-Castillo
Mr. José Collazo-Castillo is with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, leading Battery Standardization and International Engagement.  Towards Battery Standardization, he leads the ongoing design of a DoD Instruction for Joint Battery Testing Procedures.  His work towards International Engagement includes US-UK defense cooperation, serving as deputy chair of the NATO power subgroup, and development of Indo-Pacific partnerships for Unmanned Aerial System supply chain resilience.

Marnie Bailey

Planning to attend in person?  Please note: There are three airports that service the Baltimore/Washington D.C. region (Dulles, Reagan National and BWI).

• For maps and directions, follow this link.
• For local hotel accommodations, please visit this link.

Parking on campus can be a bit tricky, however, policies are a bit more relaxed during the summer!

• Follow this link to the UMD DOTS website to learn more about parking, and how to avoid pesky citations. 
• You may download a visitor parking map here. Note: The Xfinity visitor parking is the closest to  JM Patterson Hall.