PhD Internship Spotlight: Dana Thompson

PhD intern helps set up new battery materials lab at Jaguar Land Rover

Dana Thompson is completing her PhD researcher at the University of Leicester working on the Faraday Institution’s ReLiB project. Her research interests include characterisation of lithium-ion batteries and design for improved recyclability. Dana completed a 3-month internship with Jaguar Land Rover in the Advanced Cell Engineering team. She has now secured a role at Jaguar Land Rover as Battery Cell Developer, which started in September 2022.

The internship project

Dana was instrumental in setting up a new lab at Jaguar Land Rover: learning how to use the equipment and writing standard procedures and risk assessments for them, such as for experiments determining metal content in lithium-ion battery electrodes. She also advised on what chemicals and glassware were required for the lab. Additionally, she created a database on different battery chemistries as a benchmark for current trends in industry.

Schematic for ICP-MS

The experience

Coming from a small academic team, Dana enjoyed experiencing the scale of the industrial setting. She appreciated how the roles within Jaguar Land Rover differed markedly, despite all working on battery development, and yet were all linked together in a network. The environment at Jaguar Land Rover helped Dana improve her communication skills: she noted that teamworking and collaboration are essential to achieve rapid commercialisation of Jaguar Land Rover’s products.

Dana was asked to start from scratch to set up a second-hand differential scanning calorimeter in a lab. This involved creating an inventory of what was available in the kit, installing the software, cleaning and calibrating the equipment and running test samples to ensure the equipment was working correctly. While she was familiar with the type of equipment from her PhD, the brands were different, and the equipment manual was vague so she contacted the manufacturers for information on sample preparation and general set up. Dana enjoyed talking to employees from the suppliers and passing on her knowledge to the Jaguar Land Rover team. She was able to set up equipment and write standard procedures for characterisation techniques, which her colleagues who did not come from a chemistry background were less familiar with.

It was a pleasure having Dana on board at Jaguar Land Rover, as part of her industrial placement within her PhD course.

She integrated very well and quickly within the Jaguar Land Rover Advanced Cell Engineering team. She made a valuable contribution within the Jaguar Land Rover Battery Material Lab activities as well as gaining valuable experience working in an industrial context.

Dana is such a talented young lady, and our experience was so positive that we would be very keen to host similar secondments from the Faraday Institution in the future.”

Dr Valentina Gentili, Senior Battery Technical Specialist, Cell Technology, Jaguar Land Rover

Dana relished the experience of working in Jaguar Land Rover’s lab. They have more equipment, with a higher specification than she had used during her PhD studies. Dana received training in their use that she would not have had without the industrial internship.

The purpose of the battery database she created was to collate generic information (such as theoretical specific capacity, average voltage versus. Li etc.) in a format that was easily accessible to all colleagues, who could use the same resources, rather than spending time searching for a specific piece of information online. Dana was given only a rough brief at the beginning of this project. She started by looking at a few different battery chemistries, creating a factsheet on each one and presenting it in an easily understandable way. Dana appreciated the opportunity to hone her Excel skills and to learn about next generation battery chemistries that she did not cover in her PhD, such as lithium-air and magnesium-ion batteries.

Before starting at Jaguar Land Rover, Dana had not given much thought to pursuing a career in industry. She explained that prior to the internship it felt like a much less attainable goal than a career in academia. But now she would feel comfortable applying for industry roles. As part of her experience, she gained a strong network at Jaguar Land Rover that she is now using to start conversations that are helping to guide decisions about her future career.

Being there, meeting everyone, and seeing how fast-paced and exciting industry is has made me realise that this is something I could do in the future.”

Dana left Jaguar Land Rover with fond memories – like taking a ride in a high-end electric car – and the friends she made in her lab. The highlight of her internship was the positive atmosphere at in the team and emphasis on teamwork

The relationship between Jaguar Land Rover and the Faraday Institution internship programme is continuing with a number of PhD researchers expected to secure internships with the company in 2022.

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