Will Chueh
The availability of low-cost but intermittent renewable electricity (e.g., derived from solar and wind) underscores the grand challenge to store and dispatch energy so that it is available when and where it is needed. Redox-active materials promise the efficient transformation between electrical, chemical, and thermal energy, and are at the heart of carbon-neutral energy cycles. Understanding design rules that govern materials chemistry and architecture holds the key towards rationally optimizing technologies such as batteries, fuel cells, electrolyzers, and novel thermodynamic cycles. Electrochemical and chemical reactions involved in these technologies span diverse length and time scales, ranging from Ångströms to meters and from picoseconds to years. As such, establishing a unified, predictive framework has been a major challenge. The central question unifying our research is: “can we understand and engineer redox reactions at the levels of electrons, ions, molecules, particles and devices using a bottom-up approach?” Our approach integrates novel synthesis, fabrication, characterization, modeling and analytics to understand molecular pathways and interfacial structure, and to bridge fundamentals to energy storage and conversion technologies by establishing new design rules.
Academic Appointments
Associate Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
Associate Professor, Energy Science & Engineering
Senior Fellow, Precourt Institute for Energy
Principal Investigator, Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences
Administrative Appointments
Faculty Director Energy Innovation and Emerging Technologies Program, Stanford University (2018 - Present)
Faculty Co-Director of Storage-X Initiative, Stanford University (2018 - Present)
Education
Awards & Honors
Outstanding Young Investigator Award, Materials Research Society (2018)
Science Award Electrochemistry, BASF/Volkswagen (2016)
Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, Camille Dreyfus Foundation (2016)
Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2016)
CAREER Award, National Science Foundation (2015)
Young Scientist Award, International Society for Solid State Ionics (2013)
Top 35 innovators under the age of 35, MIT Technology Review (2012)
Professor of the Year Teaching Award, Stanford Society of Women Engineers (2013)
Demetriades-Tsafka-Kokkalis Prize in Energy, Caltech (2011)
President Harry S. Truman Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship, Sandia Naitonal Laboratories (2010)
Graduate Student Award, American Vacuum Society Thin Film Division (2009)
Josephine de Karman Fellowship, Josephine De Karman Fellowship Trust (2009)
Graduate Excellence in Materials Science Diamond Award, American Ceramics Society (2008)