Hi Reddit! I’m Gerbrand Ceder, though I go by “Gerd” as my first name. I’m the lead scientist for multi-valent batteries at the Joint Center for Energy Storage at Berkeley Lab, and a faculty scientist in the Materials Sciences Division at Berkeley Lab. I am also the Chancellor’s Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley. I look forward to answering your questions about building better batteries for a better future. Recently, my team and I shed light on how lithium-rich cathodes work, which could lead to higher capacity batteries. You can read about that here. And here is my website. I received an engineering degree from the University of Leuven, Belgium, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991. Between 1991 and 2015, I was a Professor in Materials Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and braved the hard Massachusetts winters. As a college student in engineering I was fascinated by the tremendous impact novel materials could have on society, and decided to make it my career to come up with more rational methods to design novel materials, rather than just “try and see.” I rode the wave of computing growth and became one of the first “computational materials designers.” In the early 90’s I got involved with Li-ion batteries, at the time a very nascent technology. It has been a wild ride since then, seeing the multiple waves of impact this technology is having as it moves from portable electronics to vehicles, and now to grid. The little time I am not working I enjoy listening to loud music, baking bread (preferably at the same time), or doing a good hike. I look forward to your questions. Edit: I’m live and answering your questions. Thanks to everyone who has submitted thus far. I’ll be answering until 3p ET/12p PT. Here we go… Edit: It’s noon and my laptop battery is at 2%… So, I must go! Thanks for joining me today. Be sure to check out the links above and below for more on battery research and stay tuned for more science reddit AMAs from Berkeley Lab. Cheers! Berkeley Lab Joint Center for Energy Storage