ECR Committee

Dr Jingwen Weng is an Imperial Research Fellow (IRF) and independent PI at Imperial College London. She has worked on battery safety and fast-charging/discharge degradation for around eight years, with research spanning thermal safety, gas evolution, electrochemical degradation and physics-based modelling. She has developed group leadership and management experience, supervising 4 MSc students, 3 undergraduate students, 3 PhDs and 1 postdoc. Jingwen is also a Co-I of the Faraday Institution THAI-BATT project and collaborate with industry.

As a member of the Faraday Institution ECR Committee, Jingwen is particularly interested in supporting ECRs through interdisciplinary collaboration, mentoring, career development and improved access to funding and professional opportunities.

Kieran is a PDRA in the Nottingham Applied Materials and Interfaces (NAMI) Group at the University of Nottingham. He completed his PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Western Australia (2020), where his research focused on natural product synthesis and catalysis. Since transitioning into energy storage research, he has developed expertise spanning synthetic organic chemistry, electrolyte design and degradation mechanisms. He joined the Faraday Institution in 2023 through the FutureCat project and currently contributes to the FAST programme, applying an organic chemist’s perspective to understanding electrolyte degradation and interphase formation. Kieran has an interest in chemisteries that push the limit to address challenges of tomorrow, exploring innovations to advance our technologies and advancing next-generation battery technologies.

Mark Blyth is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol. He works on the Faraday Institution's multiscale modelling project, where he derives and analyses closed-form mathematical models of cells and packs. These are used to explore the impacts of thermal management on temperature and charge heterogeneity, to unpick how these effects impact the performance of engineering-scale batteries. He has collaborated with a range of UK battery startups to explore problems in cell modelling. Mark's PhD covered a mixture of nonlinear dynamics and experimental neuroscience; he has found that the necessary skills are just as applicable to battery cells as biological cells!

Sean Scott is a Research Associate at the University of Leicester. In June 2023, he started his current position focusing on designing lithium-ion batteries for disassembly plus the characterization and relithiation of end-of-life materials as part of the ReLiB project. Prior to this he did a PhD, which was also associated with the Faraday Institution at the University of Leicester entitled ‘Alternative binders for simplified battery recycling’ under the supervision of Prof. Karl Ryder and Prof. Andrew Abbott.

Adam Lovett is a Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCL. After obtaining an MChem from Durham University in 2018, Adam moved to the University of Cambridge to pursue a PhD in Materials Science and Metallurgy under Judith Driscoll, focusing on vertically aligned nanocomposite thin films for battery applications. During his PhD, he was an affiliated researcher on the FutureCat project. In 2023, he joined UCL to work on the Faraday Battery Challenge collaborative R&D HISTORY project with Thomas Miller.

Adam’s current research interests are focused on two main areas: studying commercial battery electrodes with operando electrochemical atomic force microscopy and X-ray computed tomography; and the growth and study of battery-relevant thin films using advanced operando techniques.

Yige Sun is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford, a MPLS divisional enterprise and innovation fellow, and a mentor in careers support network led by the University’s People and Organisational Development unit. She obtained an MS degree from Tsinghua University and a PhD from the University of Tsukuba. She was a junior researcher in the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan.

Her previous work was focused on the fabrication and structural design of graphene-based electrode in energy storage (batteries, supercapacitors, hybrid-capacitors).

She is currently researching surface analysis techniques for lithium-ion batteries, and the advanced manufacturing of smart electrodes (as part of the Faraday Institution Nextrode project). She also serves as a robotic project leader in the Oxford Robotics & Additive Manufacturing Society, and a supervisor of a 3D printing lab for the Oxford Materials Characterisation Service.

Outside of work, Yige is a member of the Oxford Archers Club and recently started to go to the gym.

After finishing a PhD in solid mechanics at University of Bristol in 2023, Simon Tonge joined the Faraday Institution's Nextrode project. His work is focused on evidence-based design of electrodes, by microstructure level finite element simulations and analysis of X-ray and neutron tomography data. Simon is based at the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford where he is part of Professor Paul Shearing’s research group.