EECS Seminar: Future Prospects for Li-ion Batteries for Electric Vehicle Applications

Abstract: As projected, lithium-ion battery demand from electric vehicles (EVs) will grow from 21 GWh in 2016 to 1,300 GWh in 2030 and 54% of new car sales are expected to be electric. In order to have more affordable and safer EVs, new breakthroughs in materials, battery design and manufacturing are needed. In my talk, I will present our latest developments in anode and cathode materials and our smart battery management system to improve the power/cost ratio with improved performance management in EVs.

Bio: Ozkan is a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Riverside. She completed her graduate studies at Stanford University and at UC San Diego. Ozkan, who was named UC Riverside's Climate Action Champion and Change Maker Professor, believes that adaptation of electric vehicles by 2040 depends on improvements in affordability, battery storage capacity, and battery durability. In addition, she says this requires breakthroughs in raw materials, new battery technologies, material processing and battery manufacturing. Hence, Ozkan aims to reduce the cost of anode and cathode raw materials, use new, robust and safer battery architectures and increase performance in Li-ion batteries by using renewable and recyclable resources. Her work on developing batteries using inexpensive and abundant renewable resources such as mushrooms, beach sand and diatomite fossils, and waste materials such as recycled glass and plastics won Ozkan the Top 100 Author award from the Nature publishing group. Furthermore, her battery research has been featured in popular news outlets such as Forbes, Guardian, New York Times, Time, BBC, TBS, Discovery News, Popular Science, Huffington Post and more. Ozkan has advised about 70 graduate students, mainly doctoral students. She has published about 300 technical papers (Citations: 6651, H-Index: 42, i10-index: 106), and has about 12 UC patents and more than 67 patent disclosures. About 20 of her patents are licensed by the industry. She has received national and international honors, including the National Medal for Engineering Science Award from the Society of Engineering Science, the Frontiers of Engineering Honor from the National Academy of Engineering, the John J. Guarrera Engineering Educator of the Year award from the National Engineers Council, the Young Investigator Award from the Army Research Laboratories and the Emerging Scholar Award from the American Association of University Women.