“High Energy, High Power Rechargeable Lithium-Sulfur Batteries for Scalable Electrochemical Energy Storage Systems”
Arumugam Manthiram is currently the Joe C. Walter Chair in Engineering and Director of the Texas Materials Institute and the Materials Science and Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Texas at Austin. He received B.S. (1974) and M.S. (1976) degrees in chemistry from Madurai University, India, and a Ph.D. degree in chemistry in 1980 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. After his doctoral work, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, for one year, as a Lecturer in Chemistry at Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, for four years, and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory of the University of Oxford, England, for one year and at the University of Texas at Austin for five years, with Professor John B. Goodenough. He became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in 1991 and rose to the rank of Professor in 2000.
Professor Manthiram directs a large research group in electrochemical energy technologies with 35 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. His current research is focused on materials for high energy density batteries and fuel cells. Specifically, his group is engaged in developing new, low-cost, efficient materials for these clean energy technologies, novel chemical synthesis and processing approaches for nanomaterials, and a fundamental understanding of their structure-property-performance relationships. He is the Co-founder of ActaCell, a startup company that is engaged in developing high power lithium-ion batteries. He has authored more than 420 publications, including more than 340 journal articles. He has also been awarded 7 patents with an additional 5 patent applications currently pending. His published work has been cited more than 8,500 times with an h-index of 49.
Professor Manthiram received the Engineering Foundation Faculty Excellence Award in 1994, the Mechanical Engineering Department Faculty Leadership Award in 1996, and the Mechanical Engineering Department Outstanding Teaching Award in 2011. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society in 2004 and the Electrochemical Society in 2011. He was awarded the Charlotte Maer Patton Centennial Fellowship in Engineering in 1998, the Ashley H. Priddy Centennial Professorship in Engineering in 2002, the BF Goodrich Endowed Professorship in Materials Engineering in 2006, the Jack S. Josey Professorship in Energy Studies in 2008, and the Joe C. Walter Chair in Engineering in 2009.
