NSF Workshop - Drug Discovery Approach to Breakthroughs in Batteries
September 8 and 9, 2008
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

recent press

Worldwide race to make better batteries
by Mark Clayton The Christian Science Monitor January 22, 2009 edition

Cambridge, MA

Down in his basement laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Donald Sadoway and his students are hunting for the perfect battery. Not for cell phones or laptop computers, but to power a future generation of automobiles or perhaps the electric grid.

To achieve that goal, we will need batteries many times cheaper, safer, more powerful, and more durable than today's best, Professor Sadoway says. They must store enough juice to send a car 250 miles on a charge – and cheap enough to store solar or wind power for use at night and in calm periods, he says.

Risky, over-the-horizon research is vital because, although most Americans and politicians don't know it yet, the United States is in a global race to build a new generation of batteries based on lithium-ion technology, Sadoway and others say. (continued)

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teaching praise...

from an interview with Bill Gates in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 2008

Q: You're a prototypical motivated learner. You listen to chemistry lessons in your spare time. Could you ever envision finding some new idea that inspired you so much that you'd be willing, in this new era of your life, to start a completely new venture?

Gates: … Everybody should watch chemistry lectures -- they're far better than you think. Don Sadoway, MIT -- best chemistry lessons everywhere. Unbelievable.  

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If interested in working with Group Sadoway, please see open positions.

 

Donald R. Sadoway John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry Department of Materials Science Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Sadoway's Curriculum Vitae

research
... to establish the scientific underpinnings for technologies that make efficient use of energy and natural resources in an environmentally sound manner.... The overarching theme of his work is electrochemistry in nonaqueous media

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J.L. Lutkenhaus, E.A.. Olivetti, E.A. Verploegen, B.M. Cord, D.R. Sadoway, and P.T. Hammond, "Anisotropic Structure and Transport in Self-Assembled Layered Polymer-Clay Nanocomposites," Langmuir, 23 (16), 8515-8521 (2007).