Historical picture wall from our Oregon lab has a new home in our Berkeley lab. The team made some of the greatest PhD defense advertisement posters ever.

We celebrated my PhD advisor Galen Stucky's career with a new endowed lectureship at UCSB this week. Galen gave the first on his work in blood clotting materials - this led led to products in use today saving lives of our military. give.ucsb.edu/campaigns/66...

Making hydrogen production durable An interphase shields polymer electrolytes from electrochemical oxidation in an alkaline environment

progress in pure-water fed AEMWE from Dr. Shujin Hou

Perspective: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Also, grants supporting the work cancelled... we will find a way to keep working towards H2 production that competes on unsubsidized cost with natural gas.

reminder to apply NOW if you want to attend electrochemistry GRC in Ventura January... already oversubscribed and sorting through early applications:: www.grc.org/electrochemi...

Leiden is beautiful and with a deep science history, where helium was first liquefied. Also was able to catch alumni Dr Haokun Chen at his job at Brineworks building bipolar membrane electrolyzers!

External "opponent" for PhD defense of Onno van der Heijden promoted by Marc Koper. The Dutch traditions at the defense and ceremony are wonderful. Leiden is a spectacular small city with the intact old architecture still dominating a garden like center built around the canals.

First stop for a quick summer work trip in Europe was at the EMEA conference in Bad Zwischenahn. This is one of the premier gatherings of scientists working on ionomer membranes that are polymer ion conductors for energy conversion devices in electrolysis and fuel cells.

Wonderful to visit Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory hosted by An Chu and Chris Hahn. No photo allowed on site, so here is one from lunch. Lots of excellent echem technology work at LLNL. Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory and National Ignition Facility v. impressive.

Proud of the undergraduates earning their degrees. Nadia and Caitlyn are graduating from Honors College, defended outstanding theses on their excellent electrochemistry research, excelled in full suite of OCE graduate courses and are off to internships + a bright future.

Congratulations to the latest Boettcher PhD - Dr. Olivia Vulpin! Olivia figured out how to make mechanically robust advanced BPMs and has started Nuwohm to manufacture and sell them worldwide!

Congrats to Dr. Kira Thurman! Kira was joint student with Prof. Paul Kempler who launched a new project on our team looking at interfacial ion transfer kinetics in well-defined model surfaces.

opportunitiesforyouth.org/2025/05/08/m...

2026-2029 Miller Research Postdoctoral Fellowship Applications Now Open Deadline for Nominations 2026-2029: September 12, 2025, 11:59pm (-7 GMT)
miller.berkeley.edu/fellowship

Catalysis Scientists: We are looking at CO2 hydrogenation catalysts to make liquid fuels (hydrocarbons and/or alcohols ethanol or higher). Literature preps in both fixed bed and parr reactors not reproducible in our hands. Who has a recipe that is reproducible that you personally have seen work?

Big state schools provide a huge ROI, especially for any students that take advantage of research opportunities.

Berkeley Summer Electrochemistry Academy is open to all qualified people and starts May 27.

Phenomenal PhD student Minkyoung Kwak defended her thesis last week - incredible work designing electrode anode materials and passivation layers for alkaline membrane electrolysis!

Phenomenal PhD student Minkyoung Kwak defended her thesis last week - incredible work designing electrode anode materials and passivation layers for alkaline membrane electrolysis!

Some good news for a change–Queen's has set aside funds to assist any students who have lost their visa status in the US and are looking to continue their graduate studies. Please share widely.

www.queensu.ca/grad-postdoc...

Busy week... great visits to U Chicago and UW Madison where there are just incredible faculty doing important research in electrochemical science and engineering, followed by intense work with our LiSA team at Caltech on a, fingers-crossed, renewal proposal..

My off-grid electric car charging station test is alive. Pretty easy cheap and awesome. I guess tariffs will increase cost now. Need to add a few more LFP batteries. Soon to be solar pergola... anyone can do this.

This is incredible work by the LONGi team. Nearly a "perfect" devices with the physical limits probably just a bit north of 28%.

Delighted to highlight Wenbo Zhang who won a Beckman Fellowship to develop operando analytical techniques for the study of porous electrodes that are central across much of electrochemical technology. beckman-foundation.org/latest-news/...

Visit to Amherst and Alabama Chemical Engineering Departments this week! Thanks to Zhu Chen and Zhongyang Wang for hosting.

Congratulations again to Kelsey Stoerzinger, collaborator and winner of The Marks-Ipatieff Award in Catalysis recognizing outstanding research by an early-career investigator in the field of catalysis.

Ipatieff Award session in honor of Kelsey Stoerzinger staring now in room 25A in ACS San Diego conference center! Tobin Marks kicking off.

Just finished productive couple days at ARPA-e summit with partners from NREL and e-Spin. Tremendous enthusiasm for our new venture led by Olivia Vulpine taking our advanced BPMs to market, a key to unlocking high current low capex next generation electrodialysis.

ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit | March 17-19, 2025 The ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit is where energy innovators Forge the Future and outlier energy ideas are brought to life.

I am in DC next couple days for arpae-summit.com to showcase our advanced bipolar membrane technology coming to market soon.... looking forward to meeting up with fellow electrochemical technology innovators.

Smart move to capitalize on leading international talent avoiding USA... I wish folks in the USA more broadly appreciated how much our science and engineering programs bring in the most talented folks in the world to drive US economy.

PhD Graduations are wonderful events. Aaron Kaufman's work was special blending the physics of selective contacts in semiconductors with photoelectrochemistry and and voltage sensing via ambient pressure XPS.