B.A. 1976, Clark University

 

Ph.D. 1981, Brown University

 

Postdoc 1981-83, Naval Research Lab, NRC Fellowship

NATO Senior Guest Investigator, University of Rome, 7/90 - 8/90

 

Fulbright Scholar, Weizmann Institute of Science, 9/90 - 8/91

 

U.S. Army Summer Research Fellow, Army Research Laboratory, 6/92 - 8/92

 

Visiting Professor, University of Rome, 6/95 - 7/95, 7/99

 

1996 Gordon Lecturer, Gordon Center for Energy Studies, Tel Aviv University, 7/96

 

NASA/NRC Senior Research Fellow, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology 9/97 - 8/98

 

2001 Recipient of Roosevelt Gold Medal for Science, United States Navy League

 

Recipient of 2002 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring; National Science Foundation and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

 

Visiting Professor, Chemistry Department, SUNY at StonyBrook 9/04 - 1/05

 

Visiting Professor, Ceramic and Materials Engineering Department, Rutgers University, 2/05 - 7/05

Experimental Materials Science, Magnetic Resonance, Ionic Conduction in Solids, Energy Storage and Conversion Materials.

 

One of the foremost technological challenges of the coming decades is energy storage for electric vehicles, military, aerospace, and other applications. Our research concerns the evaluation of materials being developed for fuel cells and lithium batteries, which are two technologies undergoing rapid growth. In polymer electrolytes for both fuel cell and lithium battery applications, we investigate the dynamics of ion transport in these disordered media by solid state NMR methods. NMR is also utilized, along with EPR and synchrotron x-ray absorption techniques (EXAFS, XANES), to study local atomic arrangements and electronic band structure of lithium - transition metal oxide insertion compounds being developed for battery electrodes, and noble metal alloys for fuel cell catalysts. The x-ray absorption spectroscopy is conducted at the National Synchrotron Light Source located at nearby (~90 minutes by car) Brookhaven National Lab. In addition to Brookhaven, our group collaborates with several national labs (Argonne National Lab, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, Air Force Research Lab and numerous universities, worldwide, on the development and characterization of new power sources.