Past Fortnightly
Customized Cathodes on Demand with Dr. Greg Houchins
Cathodes are one of the most important — and most expensive — components of a battery, but any effort to fine-tune the cathode for certain performance requirements demands an inside-out understanding of how their structure correlates with performance. Such a comprehensive model of cathode performance has been elusive until the doctoral research of Carnegie Mellon University doctoral student Dr. Greg Houchins. Dr. Houchins is now the CEO of electrochemical cement company Chement, which he discussed with us in Aionics Fortnightly Episode 19.
In Aionics Fortnightly Episode 25, we will build on Episode 24’s discussion with Ms. Brandi Ransom of Stanford University on machine learning-optimized cathode design, by hearing about Dr. Houchins’ models for voltage-based inverse cathode design. His work, published in 2020, created an accurate machine learning model capable of predicting the open circuit voltage of an arbitrary composition of NMC cathode — enabling researchers to lower the “cost per variation” to discover new, customized cathode compositions.
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Guest bio
Dr. Greg Houchins
Founder, CHEMent
Gregory Houchins is the Founder of CHEMent, a Carnegie Mellon University spinout focused on developing electrochemically engineered carbon zero cement inspired by battery science, which would drastically reduce the embodied carbon of concrete and the carbon output of the built environment. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Physics from CMU, where his research covered a range of topics in electrochemistry and energy storage, from machine-learning-enabled computational optimizations of Li-ion battery cathodes, to mechanistic understandings of degradation pathways. He holds a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from James Madison University.
