Hats off to a collaboration that will boost sustainable energy industries

Professor Maria Forsyth wears many hats.

Most days she takes the humble title of researcher—AKA Australian Laureate Fellow, Australian Academy of Science Professor, Alfred Deakin Professor and Associate Director of ACES.

These hats give her access to some of the most advanced research programs in the country and provide an opportunity to make vital collaborations with experts in similar fields.

A great example of this is the recently announced collaboration between the Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, and Deakin University, called the Battery Technology Research and Innovation Hub (BatTRI Hub) that will develop the next generation of battery technologies.

That’s another hat for Maria—she’s the Director of the new hub.

Aiming to accelerate the prototyping and commercialisation of energy storage technologies, the hub will boost sustainable power and energy industries, including an emerging electric vehicle industry.

It draws on Deakin’s critical mass of battery-related expertise, CSIRO’s polymer research strengths and scale-up facilities and, through Maria, our own electromaterials expertise here at ACES.

ACES research will benefit from the concentration of efforts on ways to improve and prototype ‘salt-based’ batteries that use electrolyte materials such as ionic liquids.

“Two joint CSIRO-Deakin postdocs have been appointed to work on new structured polymer electrolyte materials for energy storage applications,” Maria said.

“This may feed into the ACES Synthetic Energy Systems theme in terms of metal-air devices and improved binders for electrodes in other devices.”

ACES will also be able to access the hub to prototype energy storage projects.