Designing better batteries

Join Professor Gregory Offer, online or in person, for his Imperial Inaugural.

We have limited in-person spaces available so please ensure you register in advance.

Feel free to join us online

Link: YouTube Live Event

Abstract

A green revolution in the automotive industry will see tens of millions of electric vehicles sold every year by the end of the decade. Whist combustion engines were optimised for the past century, batteries are only just off the starting line. However, the foundations for how they will catch up over the next 30 years can now be predicted.

The battery industry previously focussed on energy density and cost. These are both important, ensuring sufficient travel range and affordability. However, prioritising these has led the industry into a sub-system optimisation trap. The current generation of batteries are prone to overheating and often degrade unpredictably and too fast.

Gregory Offer is Professor of Electrochemical Engineering at Imperial College London, and his research spans the interface between the science of how batteries work and the engineering of how to design the best products around them. In his inaugural lecture he will describe how the best battery is one that is designed to maximise performance of the complete vehicle, not the battery on its own. In particular, he will highlight how understanding how to thermally manage batteries and how this affects their degradation is critical to their performance, cost, safety and lifetime.

Biography

Gregory Offer is Professor of Electrochemical Engineering at Imperial College London, is based in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and helps lead the interdepartmental Electrochemical Science and Engineering Group. His research focuses on both experiments and modelling of batteries, supercapacitors, and fuel cells. His research is material agnostic, working on understanding commercially ready technologies, including lithium ion, lithium sulfur, solid state, supercapacitors, and other emerging technologies.

He graduated with a MSc in Chemistry from Imperial College London in 2001, spent just over a year working as a Management Consultant before returning to do a PhD in Chemistry from Imperial College London, studying PEM fuel cells, graduating in 2007. Moving to Materials and Earth Science Engineering to work on solid oxide fuel cells as a postdoc until 2009, before spending 10 months working as an ESRC policy fellow in the then Department of Energy and Climate Change, where he was part of the team that won the Science, Engineering and Technology Award at The Civil Service Awards 2010 for their work on the 2050 pathways calculator and report. Greg then establish his part of the research group in 2010, with an EPRSC career acceleration fellowship. Greg was a founding co-investigator of the Faraday Institution in 2017, and is the PI of multi-scale modelling, one of their first four major research projects. Greg co-founded and organises the Future Propulsion Conference series in the UK, attracting over 600 delegates and exhibitors each year. Greg also co-founded and is Director of multiple spin-out companies, including Breathe Battery Technologies Ltd, and Cognition Energy Ltd.

Getting here

Registration is now closed. Add event to calendar
See all events