The Store Pillar

Jeffrey Lopez 

Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Jeffrey Lopez is an Assistant Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. His research is focused on using fundamental chemical engineering principles to study energy storage devices and design solutions to enable accelerated adoption of sustainable energy technologies. 

Prior to joining the Northwestern faculty, Jeffrey was an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Stanford University where he completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering. Jeffrey received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Jeffrey is an expert in the study of charge transport processes and reactions at electrochemical interfaces to inform the design of new materials for energy storage applications. He is a pioneer in the area of polymer coatings to stabilize the Li metal electrodeposition and has worked extensively on the development of advanced electrolytes for various lithium-based electrode materials and is an expert on Li metal SEI. Recently, his group is working to discover new electrolytes for high energy density battery chemistries, to develop new materials and processes for more sustainable and circular battery manufacturing, and to leverage automated experimentation and high throughput analysis to accelerate the process of materials discovery and development.

Jeffrey has received multiple awards for his research including the NSF CAREER Award in 2024, ACS Henkel Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Polymer Science and Engineering in 2020, the 2019 Metrohm Young Chemist Award, the ACS Eastman Chemical Student Award in Applied Polymer Science in 2018, and the AIChE Excellence in Graduate Polymer Research Award 1st Prize in 2016. He was also selected as a Scialog Fellow for the Automating Chemical Laboratories series. Jeffrey recently completed a Searle Teaching Fellowship at Northwestern, a program to foster teaching excellence among early career faculty, during the ’23-’24 academic year.

Mark Hersam

Chair of Materials Science and Engineering
Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and (by courtesy) Electrical and Computer Engineering and Chemistry
Director, Materials Research Science and Engineering (MRSEC)

Mark C. Hersam is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Director of the Materials Research Center, and Chair of the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Northwestern University. He also holds faculty appointments in the Departments of Chemistry, Applied Physics, Medicine, and Electrical Engineering. He earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1996, M.Phil. in Physics from the University of Cambridge (UK) in 1997, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UIUC in 2000. His research interests include nanoelectronic materials, additive manufacturing, scanning probe microscopy, renewable energy, sensors, neuromorphic computing, and quantum information science. Dr. Hersam has received several honors including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, TMS Robert Lansing Hardy Award, MRS Mid-Career Researcher Award, AVS Medard Welch Award, U.S. Science Envoy, MacArthur Fellowship, and eight Teacher of the Year Awards. Dr. Hersam has been repeatedly named a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher with over 700 peer-reviewed publications that have been cited more than 78,000 times. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and National Academy of Inventors with over 170 issued and pending patents, Dr. Hersam has founded two companies, NanoIntegris and Volexion, which are suppliers of nanoelectronic and battery materials, respectively. Dr. Hersam is a Fellow of MRS, ACS, ECS, AVS, APS, AAAS, SPIE, and IEEE, and also serves as an Executive Editor of ACS Nano.

Jiantao Li

Research Assistant Professor
Store Pillar Representative,
Trienens Research Implementation Committee (TRIC)
jiantao.li@northwestern.edu

Charles Musgrave

Kreamer CleanTech Innovation Fellow,
Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy
Postdoctoral Scholar, Sargent Group
charles.musgrave@northwestern.edu

In the early 2000’s, Harold Kung, Walter P. Murphy Professor Emeritus in the McCormick School of Engineering, developed technology that incorporated silicon (which is found in sand) with graphene to increase the energy storage capacity of lithium ion batteries. The work in his lab led to the launch of a company, now called Nanograf, which is in the process of commercializing this proprietary technology

Mark Hersam developed a high-energy battery that lengthens driving range for electric vehicles, advances safety, improves sustainability and lowers cost. Not only does it last twice as long as a conventional battery, Hersam’s battery also packs in 30% more energy density and 40% more power density, compared to state-of-the-art technologies. In 2018, Mark Hersam spun out his invention into tech startup Volexion.

With his National Science Foundation CAREER award, titled “Identifying Reaction Mechanisms for the Formation of Stable Interphases in Lithium Metal Batteries,” Jeffrey Lopez is working to clarify the electrolyte reaction mechanisms that underpin solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) formation on lithium metal electrodes in high coulombic efficiency electrolytes and use this fundamental understanding to design and evaluate new fluorine-free electrolytes.