Stanford’s Yi Cui honored for innovations in sustainability research

YI CUI, associate professor of materials science and engineering, is among five innovators who were recently honored with the 2015 Resonate Award from California Institute of Technology’s Resnick Sustainability Institute. The award recognizes researchers who have developed creative solutions to cutting CO2 emissions.

“Yi Cui has made original and innovative contributions to a broad area of energy technologies, including batteries, solar cells, transparent electrodes, electrocatalysis and topological insulators,” the award citation says. “He is especially well-known for his battery innovations, where he has laid the foundation for a battery technology revolution by actualizing batteries with three to five times higher energy density and three times less cost. His many innovations continue to advance energy storage for portable electronics, electric cars and grid applications.”

In addition to Cui, Stanford alumnus JOEL L. DAWSON, chief technology officer and co-founder of Eta Devices, USA, received a Resonate Award for innovations solving key power challenges in the cellular communications industry. Dawson received a doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford in 2003.

“These talented scientists are producing innovations that make a tremendous positive impact on the environment. The goal of the Resonate Awards is to focus attention on creative people tackling these very tough problems,” said Harry Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Caltech, and founder of the Resonate Awards.

The other 2015 winners are Tsutomu Ioroi, of the Research Institute of Electrochemical Energy/AIST in Japan; Mika Järvinen of Aalto University, Finland; and Delia J. Milliron of the University of Texas at Austin.