Meet Our Team

James Pikul

RESHAPE Director
Leon & Elizabeth Janssen Associate Professor
Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering
DARPA Microsystems Exploratory Council

CONTACT | LAB

Research Interests

• Energy storage technologies for highly mobile applications
• Exploiting new advances in electrochemistry and soft matter physics to solve the world’s mobility problems
• New energy storage technologies, room-temperature repair of metals, soft robotic actuators, and cognitive materials

Lab Capabilities

• Electrochemical and mechanical characterization
• High resolution 3D printing
• Advanced manufacturing

Eric Kazyak

Assistant Professor
Mechanical Engineering

CONTACT | LAB

Research Interests

• Operando characterization and materials design for electrochemical systems 
• In situ and operando characterization, metal and air electrode interfaces  
• Beyond-Li battery materials discovery and modification with process control, atomic layer deposition, and 3-D structuring  
• Battery abuse and safety testing  

Lab Capabilities

• Electrode and cell fabrication in argon atmosphere 
• Cell cycling 
• 3-D microscopy 
• Impedance 
• Cell abuse/combustion 
• Atomic layer deposition

Luca Mastropasqua  

Assistant Professor
Mechanical Engineering

CONTACT | LAB

Research Interests

• Long-duration energy storage in energy-dense defossilized molecules enables industrial decarbonization 
• Electrochemical production of hydrogen and hydrogen-derivatives energy carriers
• Electrochemical CO₂ capture and conversion of waste streams to valuable products to produce fossil fuel-like renewable synthetic molecules 
• Utilization and techno-economics of decarbonized molecules in industrial applications

Lab Capabilities

• Characterization and testing of fuel cells and electrolyzers  
• Fabrication of novel materials and electrochemical devices
• Scale-up and computational analysis of energy systems 

Dawei Feng

Assistant Professor
Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry

CONTACT | LAB

Research Interests

• Aqueous batteries for grid energy storage  
• Design, synthesis of electrode and electrolyte materials for aqueous batteries targeting grid energy storage  

Lab Capabilities

• Materials synthesis 
• Electrochemical characterizations 

Sage Kokjohn

Phil and Jean Meyers Associate Professor
Mechanical Engineering

CONTACT | LAB

Research Interests

• Cell-level modeling of electrochemical energy storage and CFD modeling of battery thermal runaway  
• Experimental analysis of lithium ion battery thermal runaway / fires  
• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation of lithium ion battery fires  
• System level modeling of lithium ion batteries  

Lab Capabilities

• CFD tools for simulation complex flows with detailed chemistry  
• Combustion analysis 

Matt Gebbie

Conway Assistant Professor
Chemical and Biological Engineering

CONTACT | LAB

Research Interests

• Creating next-generation electrolytes and interfaces for energy storage and electrocatalysis 
• Discovery and characterization of ionic liquids and advanced organic electrolytes for safe batteries and beyond lithium-ion battery chemistries 
• Electrolyte design to enable supercapacitors in extreme environments 
• Electrochemical recycling of pollutants, including CO₂ and NO₃

Lab Capabilities

•  In situ analysis of interfaces and functional materials 
• Synthesis of electrolytes 
• Nano-materials 
• Composite materials 
• Electrochemical analysis of dynamic soft materials 

Weiyu Li

Alfred Fritz Assistant Professor
Mechanical Engineering

CONTACT | LAB

Research Interests

• Digital twin for energy storage systems 
• We focus on mesoscale modeling to predict complex multiphase thermo-mechanical-electrochemical phenomena in in high-energy-density batteries  
• We aim to provide mechanistic insights for optimizing battery materials and to bridge the gap between the micro- and macro-scale phenomena

Lab Capabilities

• Multiscale and multiphysics modeling and simulation 
• Data assimilation and parameter estimation 
• Machine learning and reduced order models 

Dane Morgan

Professor
Materials Science and Engineering

CONTACT | LAB

Research Interests

• Computational materials design 
• Machine learning (ML) approaches for accelerating the design and discovery of new materials 
• Atomistic modeling of electronic and thermokinetic phenomena, primarily in oxides   

Whitney S. Loo

Assistant Professor
Chemical Engineering

CONTACT | LAB

Research Interests

• Polymers for a sustainable future 
• Polymer electrolytes  
• Solid state batteries, Li metal  
• Molecular level ion transport and ion solvation  
• Polymer physics  

Lab Capabilities

• Polymer synthesis  
• Pouch cell fabrication  
• Solid-state electrochemical characterization  
• X-ray and neutron scattering  

Fang Liu

Assistant Professor
Materials Science and Engineering

CONTACT | LAB

Research Interests

• Develop battery materials for electric vehicles, electric grids, and aerospace applications
• High throughput experimentation for energy material discovery

Lab Capabilities

• Material design and synthesis
• Electrochemical testing
• Advanced characterizations
• High-throughput experimentation platforms and novel manufacturing methods for battery manufacturing and testing

So Yeon Kim

Assistant Professor
Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering

CONTACT | LAB

Research Interests

• Mechanical behavior of metals/ceramics under multiphysical environments (e.g., electrochemical, nuclear):
  • Solid electrolytes/metals for batteries
  • Metal-ceramic composites for nuclear reactors
• AI-driven materials design copilot, integrating:
  • High-throughput atomistic modeling
  • Robot-assisted materials synthesis/characterization