2017 National Academy of Engineering 2016 International Battery Award Research 2016 MRS Materials Theory Award 2015 MRS Fellow 2009 MRS Gold Medal 2007 MIT School of Engineering Graduate Teaching Award 2004 ECS Battery Research Award
Gerbrand Ceder is a Belgian–American scientist who is a professor and the Samsung Distinguished Chair in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Research at the University of California, Berkeley.[1][2] He has a joint appointment as a senior faculty scientist in the Materials Sciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is notable for his pioneering research in high-throughput computational materials design, and in the development of novel lithium-ion battery technologies. He is co-founder of the Materials Project, an open-source online database of ab initio calculated material properties, which inspired the Materials Genome Initiative[3] by the Obama administration in 2011. He was previously the Founder and CTO of Pellion Technologies (having initially served as CEO), which aimed to commercialize magnesium-ion batteries. In 2017 Gerbrand Ceder was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering, "For the development of practical computational materials design and its application to the improvement of energy storage technology."[4]
In 2009, ByungWoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder demonstrated that the lithium-ion battery cathode material LiFePO4 could undergo ultrafast charging and discharging (~10 sec full discharge).[5]
In 2014, Jinhyuk Lee and Gerbrand Ceder demonstrated that when the Li content surpasses the percolation threshold, disordered rocksalt structures can deliver high discharge capacity (>300 mAh/g) and energy density (>1000 Wh/kg). The discovery opens up new opportunities for Nickel and cobalt free cathode materials for Li-ion batteries and significantly lowers the cost of cathode materials.[6]
Autonomous Materials Discovery
A-lab process involves identifying air-stable materials using DFT and the Materials Project, proposing synthesis recipes via ML models trained on literature data, and automating the entire process from dosing to characterization using a robotic laboratory, with iterative improvements based on ML analysis of XRD.[7]
In November 2023, Ceder and colleagues introduced A-Lab, an autonomous laboratory for inorganic powder synthesis, integrating computations, machine learning, and robotics.[7] The work garnered significant attention[8][9] based on the claim it successfully synthesized 41 out of 58 novel compounds, primarily oxides and phosphates, over 17 days. The A-lab used graph neural networks trained on computational materials databases and literature-trained natural language models for initial synthesis recipe proposals, optimized through active learning based on thermodynamics.
In January of 2023, a preprint[10] scrutinized the accuracy of autonomous material discovery methods used in Szymanski et al. paper.[7] They argue the initial claim of 43 new materials via A-lab, faces issues with automated Rietveld analysis in X-ray diffraction and neglected material disorder, leading to Palgrave et al.'s conclusion that no new materials were discovered.[10] The preprint stresses the need for improved approaches to using AI tools and computational models. Prior to the preprint criticism by Palgrave online[11] was addressed by Ceder in a LinkedIn post refuting many critiques made against the A-lab paper.
As a young faculty member at MIT he received multiple awards for his work, including an National Science Foundation Early Career Award and the TMS Robert Lansing Hardy Award for from The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society for "exceptional promise for a successful career" (1996).[21][22] In 1999 he was also appointed to the Res Metallica Chair of his alma mater, the K.U. Leuven.
Professor Ceder's work on energy storage materials include the Battery Research Award from the Electrochemical Society in 2004,[23] the Research Award from the International Battery Association in 2017,[24] and in 2009 the Materials Research Society (MRS) Gold Medal "For pioneering the high-impact field of first-principles thermodynamics of batteries materials and for the development of high-power density Li battery compounds".[25][26]
For his work on developing materials theory and computational materials science he received the MRS Materials Theory Award in 2016,[27][28] and in 2019 the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS – Japan) Award for Data-driven Materials Research.[29] In 2023 he was awarded the Hume Rothery Award from TMS for "seminal contributions to theory and predictive computational methods for complex multicomponent alloys and ceramic solid solutions, and pioneering advances for ab-initio materials design".[30] Most recently he was honored with the Charles Hatchett Award for the productive use of Nb in energy storage materials.[31] Other awards include the TMS Morris Cohen Award (2016)[32] and the Alexander M. Cruickshank Award at the 2015 Gordon Conference.
