Tomorrow's Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage: From Rational Design to Application

Solid state chemistry has played a vital role in the discovery of new functional materials and their necessary optimization to help meet the societal demands for smaller, faster, cleaner, and more sustainable technologies. While exploratory synthesis has been the primary method to find these materials, a better understanding of structural motifs and their impact on properties has led to more guided synthesis. Furthermore, sophisticated computational tools and theoretical models are increasingly capable of predicting new materials with exceptional properties. The challenge then becomes finding synthetic routes to realize the promise of these materials. Once these materials are synthesized, state-of-the-art characterization must be performed to understand the observed properties and provide insight into optimization methods.

This meeting on solid state chemistry will provide a forum for graduate students and post docs to present and discuss their novel research in a setting of peers with comparable experience levels. The seminar encourages the sharing of unpublished work, in either poster or oral form, on all facets of material discovery from computational screening of properties to the optimization of promising materials for actual application. Since the presenters at this seminar will focus on sharing unpublished work, discussion amongst participants will lead to new insights about the process of material discovery. A career panel will take place during the second day of the meeting with representatives from industry, national laboratories, and all types of academia. This panel will be comprised of primarily early career scientists who can talk more knowledgeably about the current job search as well as highlight multiple possible career paths.