The Team

Patrick Grant - Principal Investigator and Work Package 3 lead

Patrick Grant FREng is the Vesuvius Professor of Materials and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at Oxford University. His research takes place at the interface between advanced materials and manufacturing. Particular applications include electrodes for energy storage and advanced metallics for power generation. Many of his research projects are concerned with solidification behaviour in complex alloys, and/or the use of liquid metal, ceramic or polymer droplet and powder sprays to create unusual materials. All the research work involves close collaboration with industry.

Rachel Smith - Work Package 1 lead

Rachel Smith is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Sheffield, with expertise in particulate manufacturing across pharmaceutical, agri-chemical, consumer and battery manufacturing industries. Her research focuses on the development of micro-scale knowledge of particle-particle and particle-fluid interactions, and the use of this knowledge to advance mechanistic understanding of particulate manufacturing processes and product performance. Rachel holds a BEng (Hons) and PhD from the University of Queensland, Australia.

Emma Kendrick - Work Package 2 lead

Emma Kendrick is Professor of Energy Materials at the University of Birmingham. She has worked in industry and academia extensively on energy materials and devices; batteries and fuel cells, and has 70 papers and 21 patent family applications in this field. Her research over the last 20 years has focused on translation of novel functional materials to industry relevant device demonstrators, new battery materials and chemistries to cell demonstrators. Her enthusiasm for new technology development, mainly batteries, extends to the industrial and academic field.

Paul Shearing - Work Package 4 lead

Paul Shearing is Professor of Sustainable Energy Engineering at the Department of Engineering Science and Director of the ZERO Institute at Oxford University. He holds the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Battery Technologies. As Director of The ZERO Institute, he will help to shape ZERO’s ethos, strategy, networks, research and teaching programmes.

James Marco - Work Package 5 lead

James Marco is a Professor at Warwick University, a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET). His research interests include: systems engineering, real-time control and systems modelling. In recent years this has focussed on the application of these generic techniques to underpin new battery system designs, models and control algorithms.

Matthew Capener

Matthew Capener has been a Lead Engineer in the Energy Innovation Centre at WMG, University of Warwick for over 5 years. Matthew holds a B.A. (Hons), M.Sci. (Natural Sciences) and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. His areas of research cover battery manufacturing and scale-up including, mixing, electrode fabrication and electrochemical testing of battery materials in standard and novel cell designs with a focus on higher power devices and next generation sustainable electrode processing. All the research and development work has involved working collaboratively with Industry.

Denis Cumming

Denis Cumming received a B. Applied Science (Materials Science) from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia in 2001. In 2009 he was awarded a PhD from Imperial College, London. His PhD focused on the development and characterisation of novel ceramic anode materials for solid oxide fuel cells. In 2010 he joined the electroceramics group at the University of Sheffield and in 2012 he resumed research on high-temperature solid oxide cells. Since December 2014, he has been a lecturer in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at the University of Sheffield.

Stephen Duncan

Stephen Duncan is a Professor in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, where he is a member of the Control group. He is also a Fellow of St Hugh’s College. Prior to joining Oxford, he was Reader in the Control Systems Centre at the University of Manchester (1993 to 1998) and a Director of Greycon Limited (a spin-out from Imperial College). He has an MA in Physics from the University of Cambridge and an MSc and PhD in Control Systems from Imperial College, London. Stephen is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions in Control Systems Technology.

Chun Ann Huang

Ann Huang is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London and a holder of an ERC Starting Grant and an EPSRC Innovation Fellowship. She received her BEng in Materials Science from Imperial College London and PhD in manufacturing of solid-state energy storage devices from the University of Oxford. Her research is in the area of new materials, manufacturing technologies and advanced characterisation for energy storage devices including lithium ion batteries, solid-state lithium metal batteries, sodium ion batteries and supercapacitors.

Thomas S. Miller

Thomas S. Miller is an Associate Professor in Electrochemistry and Materials Science in the department of Chemical Engineering at UCL, jointly running the Electrochemical Innovation Lab. Tom’s research focuses on the development of electrochemical energy storage and conversion technologies, including novel ion exchange membranes, functional electrolyte additives and energy storage materials, while exploring scalable advanced manufacturing methods to move these novel materials into industry relevant technologies. More widely, he is an expert in operando characterisation and metrology.

Giles Richardson

Giles Richardson is a Reader within Mathematical Sciences at the University of Southampton. His research interests lie in the development and analysis of mathematical models of physical and biological systems. Recently he has become particularly interested in electrochemistry and semiconductor physics. These fields not only have mathematical similarities but also have a wide range of applications ranging from solar cell and battery design to the propagation of electrical signals in the heart and nervous system.

Mark Simmons

Mark Simmons is a Chemical Engineer and Professor of Fluid Mechanics at the University of Birmingham. He has been Head of School since 2014. Mark graduated from the University of Nottingham in 1995 with a Masters in Chemical Engineering and stayed on to undertake PhD study in the area of liquid-liquid flows. Following graduation, he spent a year in the USA as a postdoc at the University of Illinois. Since joining the University of Birmingham as a lecturer in 2000, he has established an internationally recognised research activity in the area of multiphase processing of complex fluids.

Peter Slater

Peter R. Slater is Professor in Materials Chemistry at the University of Birmingham and Co-Director of the Birmingham Centre for Energy Storage. He has more than 25 year’s research experience in the area of solid state/materials chemistry, ranging from battery materials to fuel cells. His present research focuses mainly on the development of novel ionic and mixed conductors for energy storage and conversion applications including the use of novel doping/coating strategies to stabilize new systems/improve materials performance.

Thomas Barthelay

Thomas Barthelay is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. He did his PhD on manufacturing and computational modelling of structural battery electrodes at the University of Bath, UK, as part of the AAPS CDT. He completed his Master’s Degree at the University of Manchester, UK, where he completed an MChem with international study at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In addition to energy storage materials, his scientific interest lies in electrochemistry, atomistic scale modelling and photovoltaic materials.

Philip Bellchambers

Philip Bellchambers is a Research Fellow at WMG, University of Warwick. His primary focus on the NEXTRODE project is to develop the current understanding of continuous slurry processing and explore its potential benefits to cell design and manufacture. His prior research centered on novel routes to the manufacture of transparent electrodes at scale and targeted for next-generation thin-film photovoltaics. Philip was awarded his Ph.D. in 2021 for his work stabilizing nano-structured ultrathin copper films.

Jediah Capindale

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sheffield, specialising in particle engineering for next-generation electrodes. My current research builds upon my PhD work in multiphase particle engineering for advanced electrode manufacturing, which I completed under the supervision of Professor Rachel Smith and Dr. Denis Cumming. I also hold an MEng in Chemical Engineering from the University of Sheffield.

Lin Chen

Lin Chen received her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry and Materials from Instituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Genova, Italy). She is currently holding a part-time research fellow position in School of Chemistry. Her research interests cover electrochemistry, energy storage materials, devices development and battery recycling. Before joining the project, she held the research fellow position on Horizon 2020 project in Energy Materials Group conducting research on the development of materials and recycling for energy storage devices.

Mona Faraji-Niri

Mona Faraji Niri is a research fellow at WMG, University of Warwick, specialising in modelling, control algorithms and machine learning. She has extensive experience in battery modelling, design, development and implementation of battery management algorithms, as well as electric vehicle powertrain modelling and control. Mona has her PhD in control engineering and her research interests cover areas in modelling dynamical systems, stochastic, nonlinear, robust control algorithms, machine learning, pattern recognition, as well as energy storage and electric vehicles.

Hamidreza Farhadi Tolie

Hamidreza Farhadi Tolie is currently a research assistant at the Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick and a Ph.D. candidate at the National Subsea Centre, Robert Gordon University, UK. He earned his B.Sc. in Information Technology in 2018 and his M.Sc. in Computer Science in 2021, both from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS). His research interests include image processing, machine learning, deep learning, and computer vision.

Marveh Forghani

Marveh is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. She completed her PhD in electrochemistry (University of Newcastle, Australia), working on the development of electrochemical characterisation methods and advanced materials for electrochemical energy storage technologies. This was followed by a research fellow position at Coventry University in 2019. She is currently working on the design and development of the Cable Li-ion Batteries based on inorganic separators.

Erdogan Guk

My research interests include Energy Devices, Instrumentation, and sensory technologies (TCs, thermistors, acoustic sensors). I'm exploring AI and machine learning applications in technology. Key areas: optimising energy device performance, advanced battery diagnostics, Solid State Electrochemistry, Fuel Cell innovations, and thin-film sensor development.

Noël Hallemans

Noël is a postdoctoral research assistant in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. His part within the Nextrode project is to investigate opportunities for optimising electrode fabrication with real-time process control. Noël obtained his PhD degree in electrical engineering in 2023 from both the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and University of Warwick, and has experience in system identification, battery modelling, and operando electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.

Sam Hare

Sam is a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham and splits his time between the Energy Materials Group and the Mixing and Multiphase Group, as part of the NEXTRODE project. Focusing on the mixing and rheological properties of electrode inks, utilising techniques such as Particle Imaging Velocimetry and Positron Emission Particle Tracking. Sam received his PhD in chemistry from the University of Bristol, as part of the Soft Matter Group. His work focused on the stability of colloid-polymer gels, used in the formulation of personal care and agrochemical products.

Rajasekar Krishnamoorthy

Rajasekar Krishnamoorthy is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sheffield, focusing on dry electrode manufacturing. He led the development of a solvent-free, dry battery electrode coating process as a Process Engineer after earning his Doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design, and Manufacturing (IIITDM), Chennai, India. His doctoral research focused on the influence of heat and mass transfer on the synthesis process of Na-ion active materials.

Juntao Li

Juntao Li is a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He obtained his MSc degree at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and completed his PhD at University College London in 2021. His PhD research focused on designing MOF based materials for electrocatalyst and energy storage materials, with the aim to study synthesis-structure-device relationships and to develop novel high-performance electrode materials. His current work focusses on the development of lithium battery electrodes and optimisation of the porous structure of the electrode.

Alex Lonergan

Alex is a postdoctoral research associate in the school of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering at the University of Sheffield. He obtained his PhD and completed subsequent postdoctoral research in University College Cork, Ireland. His previous work involved developing an operando UV-vis technique for assessing photonic crystal structured electrode films. As part of the NEXTRODE project, his research will focus on searching for PTFE alternatives for use as binders in dry electrode processing and studying the composition of prepared electrodes.

Guillaume Matthews

Guillaume Matthews is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. He obtained a first-class MEng degree in Chemical Engineering from UCLouvain in Belgium and a DPhil in Materials Science from the University of Oxford. His work for Nextrode focusses on the development of novel manufacturing routes for Li-ion battery electrodes. He is an expert in Manufacturing and Materials Characterisation and teaches Materials Science at the University of Oxford.

Andrew Morrison

Andrew is a research fellow at University College London focusing on work package 2 of NEXTRODE. His PhD and M.A.Sc. are from Concordia University in Canada and he was a postdoc at TU Delft in the Netherlands. He is an electrochemist with a background in physics, computer science, and control systems (via a B.A.Sc. at the University of British Columbia). His work before batteries was on Ni based hydrogen evolution catalysts, high pressure CO2 electrolysers, electrodeposition/forming, and spark assisted chemical engraving. And he’s keen to add other electrochemical topics to that list.

Juan Padrino

Juan currently works at the University of Southampton as a Research Fellow modelling key stages of the electrodes’ manufacturing process. Before this job, he worked at Edinburgh Napier University assessing the conversion of the UK's largest depleted natural gas reservoir into a hydrogen and carbon dioxide storage facility. At Newcastle University, Juan worked in the modelling of multiphase flow in pipelines using a mechanistic approach. Previously, he held research positions at the Micro & Nano Fluids Group of the University of Warwick, and before at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Aditya Ramadas

Aditya Ramadas is a Researcher in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London, where he is part of the Nextrode project focusing on electrode processing. He holds a master's degree in Product Design and Manufacturing and a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. Aditya has prior experience in the battery industry as a Research Engineer in India, specializing in solvent-free battery electrode research & processing.

Lara Rasha

Lara Rasha is a research fellow at University College London in the Electrochemical Innovation Lab (EIL). Her PhD was also obtained at the EIL, focussing on advanced diagnostic techniques of fuel cells and other electrochemical conversion and storage devices. Other research interests include hybridisation of electrochemical systems in portable, automotive and stationary applications.

Zhonghua Ren

Zhonghua Ren obtained his BS degree in Mineral Processing Engineering from Central South University, China in 2010, and completed his MS and PhD degree in Materials Science and Engineering at Harbin Institute of Technology, China in 2012 and 2018, respectively. His PhD research focused mainly on developing novel micro-/nanoscale and porous materials for energy storage and conversion (batteries, supercapacitors, electrocatalysis). In April 2020, he joined the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral research assistant. He is working on the development of next generation Lithium-ion batteries.

Yige Sun

Yige Sun is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford, a MPLS division enterprise and innovation fellow, and a mentor in careers support network led by the University's People and Organisational Development unit. She obtained an MS degree from Tsinghua University and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Tsukuba. She was a junior researcher at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan. She is currently working on surface analysis techniques for lithium-ion batteries, and advanced manufacturing for smart electrodes (WP3).

Ying Tian

I am a 1st year PhD student supervised by Prof Emma Kendrick at the University of Birmingham, currently working on hybrid cation battery (Na/K) systems aiming to utilize earth abundant and low-cost materials as well as mixed electrolytes to improve battery performance. In addition, I am a part-time research assistant on Nextrode and have been selected as an UGS scholar to support the PGR community at the University of Birmingham. Hobby wise, I am a certified snowboard instructor, BASI level 1 and CASI level 2, mainly based in the Tirol region, Austria, specializing in freeriding and carving.

Alok Tiwari

Alok is a PDRA at the University of Sheffield. He has recently submitted his thesis for review as part of his dual MSc. and PhD degree program at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India. His doctoral research primarily focuses on the application of the Discrete Element Method (DEM) to model the behaviour of non-cohesive, cohesive, spherical, and non-spherical particles subjected to vertical vibration. Within the Nextrode project, he will be performing DEM based simulations to gain better insight into the structures of lithium-ion battery electrodes during the process of calendering.

Simon Tonge

Simon Tonge completed a PhD in solid mechanics at the University of Bristol in 2023. His work focused on the application of advanced image-based techniques and finite element analysis to fracture mechanics. Having joined the Nextrode collaboration, working under Paul Shearing at the University of Oxford, he uses simulations and X-ray tomography to optimise electrode microstructures. This involves the application of novel algorithms and machine learning to synchrotron X-ray tomography data.

Dongrui Xie

Dongrui is a Research Fellow in the School of Metallurgy and Materials at the University of Birmingham. Prior to the University of Birmingham, he was a research assistant at Loughborough University, working on MAP-IT project from the Faraday Institution. Dongrui did his BSc in Materials Physics at Sichuan University, while he joined LCMP (Loughborough China Materials Partnership) project in 2016. He obtained his MSc and PhD degree from Loughborough University in 2018 and 2023. He is currently working on the innovations in metrology for the electrode manufacturing process.

Stanislaw Zankowski

Stan is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. He has obtained his PhD degree through a joint industrial-academic project at imec and KU Leuven in Belgium, working on 3D-nanowire electrodes for Li-ion batteries and electrolytic H2 generation. Prior to that, he completed a MSc in Nanoscience at the University of Barcelona, Spain and a Young Graduate Internship at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands. Besides energy storage, his scientific interests include (nano)porous materials, surface engineering and electro/physical chemistry.

Will Dawson

Will Dawson completed his BSc from the University of Manchester in 2017, followed by a MRes from Imperial College London in 2020, with previous research on lignin-based carbon fibres and CO2-derived polycarbonates. He joined the Electrochemical Innovation Lab at University College London as a PhD student in September 2020 to work on electrode characterisation to inform modelling and microstructural electrode design (NEXTRODE WP4).

Gargi Giri

Gargi Giri is a PhD student in the chemical engineering department at the University College London. She previously completed her BEng in chemical engineering from the University of Nottingham. After a two and half years of consulting work, she returned to academia to complete her MSc in chemical process engineering from the University College London, where she conducted research in zinc-air batteries. With an ambition to develop sustainable energy solutions, she is currently working on the Nextrode project, focused on the calendering process under the supervision of Professor Paul Shearing.

Benjamin Meyer

Ben is a DPhil student within the PSG group at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on understanding and developing dry processing techniques of Lithium-Ion battery electrodes. With this production method, the requirement for harmful, toxic solvents is eliminated, however, much more research is required to make dry processing attractive for large-scale adoption.

Ben has a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Warwick. Here, he worked on modelling mechanical damage of Solid-state batteries as part of his dissertation and through an internship at WMG.

Hamza Mohamed

Hamza Mohamed is a Chemical Engineer by background with an interest in problem solving and sustainable development. His previous experience includes industrial and academic research and development working in different fields of engineering research. He is keen to be part of the NEXTRODE group as he tackles the challenges within the battery production process by using DEM modelling and experimental verification, analysing particle-particle interactions.

James Parker

James Parker is PhD student for the Chemical and Biological Engineering department at the University of Sheffield. After graduating with an MEng in Chemical Engineering in 2020, he has rejoined the department under the supervision of Dr Denis Cumming and Dr Rachel Smith, where he will be researching into the thermodynamics of Li-ion batteries.

Tayeba Safdar

A Chemical Engineer with a keen interest in sustainable energy. Currently a PhD researcher, working on the Nextrode project at Imperial College London, specifically investigating Lithium-Sulfur batteries.