Chemistry professor Eric McCalla awarded Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future grant
Eric McCalla, Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry, has received a (DMREF) grant, a joint program of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).听
The DMREF program brings Canadian university researchers in the natural sciences and engineering fields together with university collaborators from the United States to build interdisciplinary teams of researchers that develop the fundamental knowledge base needed to advance the design and development of materials听with social importance and desirable properties, and developing and training the next generation of materials scientists and engineers.听
The five partnerships announced today will receive approximately $1.53 million over four years from NSERC, including $400,000 awarded to .听听听听
McCalla听will collaborate on a project that addresses the urgent need for more efficient mixed ionic-electronic conductors to enable a number of new technologies including batteries, fuel cells, sensors, and neuromorphic computing and memristors.
His team听will use automated high-throughput screening to test thousands of possible compounds, while the project鈥檚 U.S. research partners will apply computational modeling and machine learning to narrow the field of compositions to be tested. Detailed follow-up studies on the highest performing materials will further design principles and guide new iterations.听
The joint project will generate novel materials and new insights that could accelerate the development of mixed conductors enabling new technologies. In the long term, these advances could benefit electric vehicle manufacturing in both Canada and the U.S. by enabling more sustainable batteries.听
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