#FaradayPathways Laura Wheatcroft

Dr Laura Wheatcroft shares her #FaradayPathway, from being a Faraday Institution Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield on the FutureCat project to working as a scientist for UK-based battery start-up, Nyobolt. She reflects that a pathway from a PhD in materials science to working in an industrial organisation was always her preferred career route, but describes how two interventions from WISE and the EMPOWER programme came at pivotal decision points, guiding and supporting her along the way.

A pathway to a PhD in battery science

 

Science was Laura’s favourite subject, even in primary school. Her parents took her to air shows and she always took a great interest in the machines she saw there. Whilst completing her GCSEs, she took part in a WISE (Women into Science and Engineering) programme which gave girls a glimpse into the variety of engineering departments at Imperial College London. Laura explains how that experience was key to opening her eyes to opportunities at degree level.

“Imperial had such a good vibe. The people I met all seemed so excited about what they were working on and were very happy to sit and explain what they were doing to sixth formers. It was here that I discovered that materials science was a subject! One that combined what I enjoyed about chemistry and physics, without having to do any organic chemistry! I saw how materials science could drive some of the decisions engineers had to take. And I preferred it to the engineering I saw in the civil, mechanical, computing and electrical departments because it was a bit more abstract.”

Laura went on to complete an integrated Master’s in the materials department at Imperial. While there she undertook two internships in the summer holidays. The first was at the Nuclear Materials, Chemistry and Corrosion department in Rolls Royce’s submarine division in Derby.

“It was so interesting – I really enjoyed it. We got to visit one of the company’s suppliers – a metal fabricator – and go into their casting and shaping rooms. It honestly looked like Mount Doom out of Lord of the Rings – with massive crucibles of molten metal.

“It was my first taste of a big engineering company. On the first day I found myself in a room with 200 interns, only a handful of whom were women. We were all treated fairly and the guys were really nice. On that internship I experienced what it would be like to work in a heavily male-dominated industry and for a big organisation. I learned the necessity of speaking up more than I normally would. I also realised I wasn’t suited to working for a big organisation. You have to push hard to get noticed, and that wasn’t me.”

The Rolls Royce experience also made her realise that doing a PhD was more or less a necessity if she wanted to move into materials science R&D in industry. As such, Laura selected her second internship to get more lab experience. She had always had a fascination in green energy and at the end of her third year she gained a place as a student researcher at Purdue University, USA. There, she worked in a polymer research group making separators for lithium-air batteries.

“Purdue is in the middle of corn field Indiana. The campus is enormous. It’s got a full size football stadium, a marching band and organised sports off the scale. In my group, I was given a lot of autonomy to go off and build a gas rig to measure water and oxygen flow through separators made for Li-air batteries. It was interesting to see the cultural differences between lab groups in the US and UK. In the US they’re more trusting and more admitting of undergrads into research labs, which was great for me.”

She went on to do a Master’s project on solid-state lithium-ion electrolytes with Dr Ainara Aguadero, and her PhD student Rowena Brugge.

“Ainara was an amazing supervisor –super enthusiastic and so approachable. She made me feel that the work I was doing at Master’s level was important.

“I was working on a really interesting subject. We had a furnace integrated into a glove box and we were synthesising ceramic solid-state electrolytes. This one time a material turned transparent during sintering, which we weren’t expecting. It was a moment when I was fresh to research and where I was the first to see this effect for the material we were researching in the group. It was so cool. I caught the bug and just wanted to keep digging, making new materials and characterising them. It convinced me I wanted to do a PhD in batteries.

PhD and postdoctoral research years working on the FutureCat project

“I started my PhD in 2015 as part of the Energy Storage CDT at Southampton and Sheffield. I really enjoyed the first year when we were taught about the energy storage ecosystem in a broad sense. I wanted to see the bigger picture and not focus down just on one subject as is typical for a PhD.

Her PhD was with Beverley Inkson in Sheffield, which was sponsored by Johnson Matthey.

“I knew from early on that my time in academia was a stepping stone into industry – that I wanted my research to make a tangible difference – to contribute to a physical output. So when I chose my PhD I wanted to keep an industry link. Having an industry sponsor was great, especially as it gave me access to their crazily good characterisation suite.”

During Laura’s PhD she developed microscopy techniques to image battery degradation. She got the opportunity to visit Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf to use their helium microscope, which hadn’t been used before on battery research. It proved to be useful to characterise the SEI (solid electrode interphase) layers in batteries.

“My PhD was challenging. Everyone around me was doing solid-state chemistry, but my research sat between the development of microscopy techniques and use of those microscopy techniques on batteries. It took me a while to figure out where I fitted into the ecosystem. But new techniques have to have a first use case and my research was that.”

Laura’s PhD finished at the start of the pandemic. She was very grateful to be offered a post-doc position in the same department working on the Faraday Institution FutureCat project – somewhere familiar, where she knew a lot of the people. Her research investigated novel methods to form Li-ion battery microstructures, and developed new mechanical testing methods to understand effect of microstructure on battery performance.

“I enjoyed the experience being a post-doc as part of a multi-university project significantly more than my PhD. I felt part of bigger whole. In an individual PhD you’re working on one project; it’s a struggle sometimes to see the wood for the trees and to know whether or not it’s going well. In my post doc in FutureCat, I could dip in and out of other projects – to support others as well as driving my own research.”

Training and professional growth with the Faraday Institution

Being part of the Faraday Institution community also gave rise to two specific opportunities for Laura: membership of the Early Career Researcher (ECR) Committee, and participation in the EMPOWER positive action career development training programme run by Skills 4, which aims to give women the tools for career success.

“The ECR committee was one of the best committees I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. We worked well together with a clear vision of a group of ECRs delivering a conference for ECRs.

“But it was EMPOWER that was life changing. I was at a transition point. I knew I wanted to move into industry but felt intimidated to jump back to that sector. I didn’t know what jobs to apply for. I felt stuck and unconfident. EMPOWER was great at enabling me to reflect inwards on myself and what drives me. I knew instinctively what I wanted but I previously couldn’t express it coherently to myself. The EMPOWER programme made me be able to articulate that I wanted to stay technical, that I needed something really interesting to research, and that I needed to work somewhere smaller and more fast paced or I would struggle to thrive. I became much more confident in applying for jobs. It also made me realise that it’s ok to reconnect with people you haven’t seen in a while to ask for advice while job hunting.”

Transition to industry and current position at Nyobolt

Laura began working as a scientist at Nyobolt in May 2023. The company is designing and producing ultra-fast-charge batteries for various applications, based on a niobium tungsten oxide anode chemistry that emerged from Professor Dame Clare Grey’s group at the University of Cambridge. In June 2024, the company demonstrated that a car based on its technology could charge from 10% to 80% in under five minutes in a track test. Laura’s research is further investigating under what conditions the technology can operate effectively, and how it pairs with different cathodes materials.

“I really like it. It ticks my fast-paced and interesting boxes perfectly. It’s one of the few UK companies that has an entire battery ecosystem in one company: R&D on battery chemistries, powder manufacturing, cell design, pack engineering, battery management systems and power electronics. It gives me a unique opportunity to learn about all those areas while focusing on one. I work with a cell development team from the US with an amazing amount of experience. I’ve been on a trip to Japan to look at equipment we might potentially buy. I’ve been on trips to manufactures to see cell manufacture at large scale. There’s so much more to battery engineering than you get to see from academia.”

Future directions and advice for ECRs

Where does Laura see her career going?

“I’ll definitely stay on the tech side of things. It’s where I’m happiest. In time I’d like to lead bigger projects, and perhaps go into consultancy one day. It’ll be exciting to see how the battery ecosystem will continue to grow in the UK.”

And what advice does she have for early career researchers?

“The best thing you can do for yourself is grow your network. Before EMPOWER, I was under the impression that being good at networking meant having the confidence to go up to random people at conferences and talk about their research. EMPOWER corrected that notion. It’s about thinking about who you know that you can call upon for advice. It’s by talking to Rowena when I was applying to Nyobolt that I gained confidence that it was a good place to work.

“My other advice would be that it’s people that you work with that make the biggest difference. The group culture and supervisor are the biggest factor in whether you’ll enjoy your PhD – even over the research topic. Choose one that operates in a way that will allow you to thrive.”

Read more:

• Read Laura’s paper, published as part of FutureCAT, on Fracture testing NMC811 secondary particles inside an SEM.
• Find out about routes into battery research roles in industry on the Faraday Institution’s career portfolio
• BBC article, 28 June 2024, Electric car battery charges in under five minutes in track test

#FaradayPathway written by Rebecca Dawes, Science Communications Intern, and published July 2024.