In 2020, seven of PNNL’s 17 highly cited researchers were experts in energy storage. This concentrated scientific expertise, coupled with its advanced R&D facilities and distinctive scientific capabilities, enables PNNL to take on ambitious energy storage programs, such as ESMI. The ESMI project team includes several of these renowned scientists, along with engineers and researchers from multiple disciplines, including materials science, chemistry, mathematics, applied computing, and grid modernization.
 | Wei Wang | Director Dr. Wang is an internationally recognized expert in the field of large-scale energy storage for his innovative work on convectional energy storage technologies. He is currently the director of ESMI, a multi-million-dollar and multi-year project at PNNL to fundamentally transform the energy material R&D through a physics-informed, data-driven approach. He also serves as the chief scientist and technical lead on stationary energy storage R&D at PNNL. Dr. Wang joined PNNL in 2009 after receiving a PhD in materials science and engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. |
 | Emily Saldanha | Material Discovery and Machine Learning Integration Lead Dr. Saldanha is the machine learning integration leader for ESMI, where she develops machine learning methods to improve and accelerate the process of material discovery for energy storage technologies. She is a data scientist in the Data Science and Analytics group of the National Security Directorate at PNNL. She holds a PhD in physics from Princeton University and a BA in physics and mathematics from Purdue University. Principal Investigators: Aaron Hollas, Yangang Liang |
 | Zhijie (Jay) Xu | Cross-Scale Validation Lead Dr. Xu received his PhD in mechanical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York. His PhD research involves the development of large-scale parallel simulation tools for multi-scale (atomistic to continuum) modeling for aluminum alloys. Dr. Xu worked at Idaho National Laboratory starting in 2007 and was involved in modeling and simulation for subsurface strongly coupled multi-physical processes, including flow, reactive transport, and geomechanics. He joined PNNL in 2010. Principal Investigators: Jie Bao, Soowhan Kim |
 | Panos Stinis | Battery Digital Twin Lead Dr. Stinis is a senior scientist in the Advanced Computing, Mathematics, and Data Division. He specializes in scientific computing with current application interests in model reduction of complex systems, singularity detection and tracking, particle filtering, mesh refinement, and machine learning. He holds a PhD in applied mathematics from Columbia University and a BS degree in mechanical engineering from National Technical University of Athens. Principal Investigators: Amanda Howard, Yucheng Fu |
Seedling Project Leaders: Daisy Liu, Bingbin Wu, Yuyan Shao, Litao Yan, Ruozhu Feng, Steven Spurgeon, Praveen Thallapally
Team Highlights and Milestones
09/03/2024 | The Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA), a new Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Innovation hub, will accelerate the discovery of new battery materials and chemistries that use Earth-abundant components and green manufacturing processes. ESRA includes leadership from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and Argonne National Laboratory, which serves as the hub’s headquarters. Learn More.
09/14/2023 | Wei Wang, director for the Energy Storage Materials Initiative, is selected to receive $2.9 million funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)’s Advanced Materials & Manufacturing Technologies Office’s FY23 Battery Manufacturing Lab Call. Learn More.
03/16/2023 | Wei Wang, director for the Energy Storage Materials Initiative, serves in the leadership team in a team of six DOE national laboratories to receive a total of $2 million to carry out the Rapid Operational Validation Initiative (ROVI) from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE's) Office of Electricity (OE). Learn More.
10/27/2022 | Congratulations to ESMI researcher, Xin Zhang, for a winning proposal selected by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) as part of the ARPA-E Mining Innovations for Negative Emissions Resource Recovery (MINER) program. Learn More.
02/14/2022 | Wei Wang, director for the Energy Storage Materials Initiative, partnered with Caltech to win the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) OPEN 2021 program on a hybrid hydrogen compression and redox flow battery system. Learn More.
09/23/2021 | ESMI researcher, Yuyan Shao, partnered with the TreadStone Technologies, Inc to win the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)’s Advanced Materials & Manufacturing Technologies Office’s flow battery and long-duration energy storage program. Learn More.
11/19/2019 | ESMI researcher, Jie Bao, is selected to receive funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)’s the Design Intelligence Fostering Formidable Energy Reduction (and) Enabling Novel Totally Impactful Advanced Technology Enhancements (DIFFERENTIATE) program. Learn More.