The Power of Collaboration: the Fortescue ZERO / Faraday Institution Relationship
To effectively compete in the global race toward electrification, the UK must adopt a strategic approach to foster intelligent, innovative and targeted collaborations. The Faraday Institution was established with a model of application-inspired research, designed to facilitate fruitful partnerships between universities and industry players, to accelerate research out of the lab and onto the path of commercialisation. To do so, it has convened a collaborative community to transcend traditional boundaries between academia and industry, bringing people together to allow the exchange of ideas, tools and techniques whilst emphasising research alignment with industry needs.
In this success story, we explore the ongoing and multi-faceted collaboration between the Faraday Institution community and Fortescue ZERO (formerly WAE), the Oxfordshire-based technology and engineering services company. This collaboration has yielded substantial benefits for both organisations in terms of:
- Establishing research and commercialisation directions
- Facilitating knowledge exchange, development and project delivery
- Nurturing talent development and recruitment efforts
The Faraday Institution values
The Faraday Institution’s model and values underpin the UK battery research community’s ethos in what is a global race to develop next generation technologies ripe for scale up and manufacture. The Faraday Institution values…
• We collaborate
• We are pioneering
• We make a difference
…were chosen to deliver a competitive advantage and drive impact for the UK. The organisation understands the power of collaboration, network building and convening of community.
We collaborate
• We actively collaborate to achieve shared and focused objectives.
• We build connections; within and between project teams, and externally with industry, government, and other influencers.
• We foster a sense of belonging.
• We work together to develop a diverse pool of talent.
Establishing research and commercialisation directions
At a research programme level, the Fortescue Zero/Faraday Institution relationship is mutually beneficial and wide reaching. The company’s presence at the Expert Panel helps to ensure the Faraday Institution’s research portfolio is focused on industry need. In turn, Fortescue ZERO benefits from knowledge transfer opportunities and access to the researcher network.
Timeline
2018
Rob Millar, Head of Electrical, Fortescue, appointed as one of the inaugural Faraday Institution Expert Panel Members.
As tagged expert panel member for the Multi-scale Modelling project, he meets monthly with project leadership to steer research direction to meet industry need.
Bi-yearly expert panel meetings: knowledge sharing, and informing strategic research directions across the research portfolio.
2020, 2021, 2023
Networking & knowledge exchange at Faraday Institution Conferences.
2022 – present
Engagement on the set up of the Battery Parameterisation Standard (BPX) and Battery Modelling Standard’s Forum – two important outputs of the Multi-Scale Modelling project.
Image: Rob Millar presenting at the BPX webinar
June 2023
Allan Paterson (formerly Head of Programme Management at the Faraday Institution), joins Fortescue ZERO as Head of Battery Development.
July 2025
Tom Maull, Principal Product Manager – Innovation & Enabling Technology, announced as one of the inaugural members of the Steering Group for the Battery Parameter eXchange (BPX) – an open standard for physics-based lithium-ion battery models that has been developed to reduce costs and streamline battery model supply chains through a common definition of physics-based battery modelling parameters that can be used widely across industry
He comments: “To increase the speed of innovation in the battery modelling community, industry and academia need to speak the same language. We’re pleased to play a leading role in this endeavour.”
As tagged expert panel for the modelling project Rob Millar’s monthly input is invaluable in ensuring the project retains its industry relevance. But his input extends much beyond that, to safety, to new chemistries and beyond, to inform the strategic direction of our entire portfolio of research. In turn, knowledge transfer from Faraday Institution researchers is helping to shaping Fortescue ZERO products such as Elysia Battery Intelligence.”
James Gaade, Research Programme Director, Faraday Institution
Fortescue ZERO is a world class battery development company that is highly engaged with the Faraday Institution on multiple research topic areas, from pack design to thermal insulating materials to development of new battery chemistries. It’s the type of relationship where we can informally reach out to each other to validate our thinking. Having this type of sounding board is indispensable.”
Ian Ellerington, Technology Transfer Director, Faraday Institution
Collaborative research projects
The mechanisms that enable collaborative research projects between the two organisations are wide ranging from Faraday Institution-funded Industry Sprints, Seed Projects and Industry Fellowships to more informal collaborations that evolve from existing relationships. Strong collaborative links have also been formed between Faraday Institution researchers and Fortescue ZERO as part of Faraday Battery Challenge Innovate UK collaborative R&D projects such as WIZer. Here expertise and knowledge from the Multi-scale Modelling project researchers helped the company develop a new approach to battery management systems, which formed the basis of the launch in April 2023 of the Elysia Battery Intelligence System serving automotive manufacturers, battery asset financiers and fleet operators.
Timeline
Key
September 2018 – March 2022
Faraday Battery Challenge Collaborative R&D project WIZer – developing a new approach to battery management systems. Project benefits from expertise and knowledge from researchers in the Faraday Institution Multi-scale Modelling project at Imperial College London and elsewhere.
August 2018 – June 2021
Fortescue ZERO is a a member of the Collaborative R&D project UK Niche Vehicle Battery Cell Supply Chain led by AMTE Power.
February 2020 – present
Industry Sprint between Prof. Nicole Grobert, University of Oxford and the company on thermal interface materials.
September 2021 – February 2023
Industry Fellowship between Fortescue ZERO and Dr Billy Wu and Dr Haijun Ruan, Imperial College London, on derating strategies.
- Fellowship helps Dr Haijun Ruan secure his first academic position at Coventry University – March 2023.
- Fellowship helps Dr Billy Wu win an Impact Acceleration Account award at Imperial on battery digital twins – July 2023.
June 2022 – June 2023
Collaboration between Imperial College London and Fortescue ZERO on improvements to equivalent circuit models, leading to a paper in Applied Energy.
June 2022 – March 2024
Dr Huizhi Wang, Imperial College London, leads a seed project developing a multiphase, multiphysics model of battery failure via thermal runaway in collaboration with Fortescue ZERO.
November 2022 – present
Melissa He invited to talk on a careers panel for the Faraday Institution ECR Conference. Caught up with Roksana Jackowska (previously met at a cohort tour of Fortescue ZERO) leading to conversations within Fortescue ZERO and a current collaboration.
February 2023 – December 2024
Fortescue ZERO a member of the collaborative R&D project ExtrAPower led by Nyobolt.
April 2023
Launch of Fortescue ZERO’s Elysia Battery Intelligence System – underpinned by the Multi-scale Modelling and WIZer projects.
October 2023
Fortescue opens a state-of-the-art technical innovation centre in Kidlington, Oxfordshire. The £17 million site will be home to 300 highly skilled workers and focuses on the technical development, testing and prototype production of batteries and zero emission powertrains for a wide range of applications, including motorsports, mining haul trucks, and other off-road and automotive applications.
October 2024
Industry Sprint project begins between the University of Portsmouth and Elysia Battery Intelligence on ultrafast “self-parameterisation” for lithium-ion battery models. The project aims to combine ultra-fast surrogates (around one million times faster than classical solvers) with modern inference techniques to automatically yield parameterised battery models. The team will apply this methodology to industrially relevant models and deliver user-friendly code to Elysia for integration in their commercial product.
March 2025
Industry Sprint project begins between WMG, University of Warwick and Elysia Battery Intelligence on the parameterisation of physics-based models using in-operando techniques. The team will use WMG’s newly developed in-house operando XRD technique to build a validated physics-based model of cell degradation, incorporating critical manufacturing and aging path dependencies. If successful, these efforts could be commercialised through integration into Elysia’s products.
July 2025
Professor Paul Shearing, David Howey and Nicole Grobert, University of Oxford were awarded an EPSRC Prosperity Partnership with Dr Allan Paterson of Fortescue Zero to develop safer, longer lasting, and more efficient batteries for vehicles in difficult to decarbonise sectors like mining. The project will use AI, new materials, and smart management systems to improve the durability and performance of batteries, cutting costs.
Faraday Institution’s Technology Transfer Director, Ian Ellerington, will sit on the partnership’s Advisory Board.
September 2025
Industry Fellowship between Coventry University and Elysia Battery Intelligence from Fortescue on advancing the development of physics-driven model (PM) based battery management system (BMS) algorithms, with a particular focus on improving their robustness and verifiability.
Working with Fortescue ZERO has been immensely productive for my team (with 10+ publications from WIZer) and ensured we are applying our skills to solve actual problems that industry faces. Having regular contact with the company, and especially with the team that later became Elysia, meant we could benefit from each other’s experience, often exchanging advice and data. Showcasing meaningful and mutually beneficial collaboration, we continued to work together beyond the end of the project – the last article published together is on a model that targets an industry need and provides a viable solution for battery state estimation.”
Dr Monica Marinescu, Imperial College London and Co-investigator on the Faraday Institution’s Multi-scale Modelling Project
The Faraday Institution and its research community have welcomed industry collaboration with a shared enthusiasm to address the barriers to battery electrification. They have been receptive to industry needs and understanding the R&D skills required. The FI collaboration has widened our network, giving us insight into the research/innovation happening across the UK, and facilitated conversations with the researchers and industry partners alike.”
Melissa He, Senior Engineer, Elysia Battery Intelligence from Fortescue ZERO
Working with Fortescue ZERO has enabled us to frame our research with an industrially relevant lens. Whilst a range of approaches and techniques are possible for battery diagnostics and control, balancing this with real-world practicalities through collaboration with the company has helped us to make sure our research can easily be adopted by industry.”
Dr Billy Wu, Imperial College London, Industry Fellow, and co-investigator on the Multi-scale Modelling project
To be able to work with a company such as Fortescue ZERO, who have extremely interesting problems to solve, gives the research we do a focus and provides the students and researchers a window into industry challenges and research that has real-world impact.”
Emma Kendrick, Professor of Energy Materials and the University of Birmingham, and co-investigator on multiple Faraday Institution projects
We’re really excited to be collaborating closely with the Elysia product development team on the topic of battery modelling, which is core to developing advanced diagnostics algorithms. The partnership will give us access to Fortescue ZERO’s broad expertise, understanding of user requirements, and rich test dataset. We will in return be able to demonstrate the advantages of using innovative modelling approaches, bridging between electrochemical and circuit models, to improve health and state estimation. On a personal level we also hugely enjoy working with the Elysia team and particularly appreciate their curiosity, openness, and eagerness to learn together with us.”
Professor David Howey, University of Oxford, and Co-investigator on the Multi-scale Modelling project
The company will provide cell and module test data, which the Imperial team will use as the basis for model validation. Additionally, model development will benefit from their technical knowledge and industrial experience in design for battery safety. Fortescue ZERO is interested in the project’s outcome as, if successful, it has the potential to inform, accelerate and reduce costs associated with battery safety design processes.”
Dr Huizhi Wang, Imperial College London, comments about the seed project she is leading.
Nurturing talent development and recruitment efforts
As Fortescue ZERO embarks on large-scale electrification projects the R&D team will need to expand through the addition of 200 new positions at Begbroke, Kidlington and Banbury. This recruitment challenge is anticipated to be significant, with a substantial number of individuals holding PhDs needed. Among all its departments, the battery team stands out for recruiting a higher volume of PhDs, often sourced from their partnerships and networks.
Fortescue ZERO anticipates they will need to recruit individuals who can:
- advance battery technology across various sectors, including energy, transport and manufacturing
- foster the development of the UK battery value chain
- gain academic and industrial advantages in both current and next-generation chemistries
- enhance the role of batteries in contributing to achieving net zero emissions in sectors that include automotive, wider transport, aerospace, grid storage, portable technology
- facilitate the launch of new technology companies and spinouts
Working together, the talent development initiatives between Fortescue ZERO and the Faraday Institution have been mutually beneficial.
| By the numbers | |
|---|---|
| Of the 30-strong Fortescue ZERO battery R&D team in February 2024: | |
| 6 | of the team have been previously funded or affiliated with the Faraday Institution |
| 4 | internship placements at Fortescue ZERO from Faraday Institution PhD cohorts |
| 33% | hold a PhD |
| 59% | have a Masters |
| 28% | come from another battery company or start up |
| 20% | come directly from studying (PhD/student) |
| 20% | come directly from another industry |
| 32% | of students have battery experience |
Timeline
Key
November 2018 – November 2023
Tours of Fortescue ZERO each year for first year PhD cohorts, building awareness of industry opportunities at the start of their PhD training programme.
Image: Faraday Institution PhD cohort 2 at Fortescue ZERO
2020 – 2024
Fortescue ZERO provides a PhD top up for a EPSRC Case Award for Waseem Marzook, supervised by Dr Monica Marinescu, Imperial College London on “Characterising thermal performance of Li ion batteries and cell benchmarking in application-relevant conditions”
April 2022
Melissa He, Senior Engineer – Elysia Battery Intelligence, invited to talk at 4th year PhD cohort training. Met Jacob Dean, leading to introductions to Tim Engstrom, an internship, then a full time role for Jacob.
May 2022
Melissa He joins Faraday Institution Training and Diversity Panel. Helps to advise the Faraday Institution on how best to achieve the aims for its career development programmes. Melissa is replaced on the panel by Tom Maull, Principal Product Manager – Innovation & Enabling Technology, in 2025
July – September 2022
Jacob Dean (University of Bath, Multi-scale Modelling project) completed a PhD internship at the company, leading to a full time role, Data Scientist, Fortescue ZERO, April 2023. Read more.
Image: Jacob Dean at Elysia.
July 2022 and 2023
Fortescue ZERO support for Faraday Institution’s sponsorship of Formula Student, raising awareness and excitement of battery engineering as a career path, judging Best EV Powertrain.
Image: The judges with the Southampton University team at Formula Student, who won the Best Newcomer EV Award in 2022
August 2022
Anna Tomaszewska joins the company as Senior Engineer – Battery Electrochemical Modelling, following a PhD at Imperial College London, funded by Shell, and associated with the Multi-Scale Modelling project.
April – June 2023
Nicole Melzack (University of Southampton) completed a PhD internship with the company.
April 2023
Antti Aitio joins Fortescue ZERO as Principal Data Scientist following a PhD at the University of Oxford affiliated to the Multi-scale Modelling Project.
June – August 2023
Adam Lewis-Douglas (University of Oxford, Multi-scale Modelling Project) completed a PhD internship with the company.
September 2023
Hollie Richards (University of Bath, CATMAT project) began a PhD internship with the company.
Autumn 2023
Niall Kirkaldy, joins Elysia from Imperial College London after working on the WIZer project.
February 2025
Halima Khanom, formerly a Faraday Institution PhD Researcher from cohort 3 at the University of Birmingham, joins Fortescue as Project Engineer in Battery Performance.
July 2025
Nick Muir, Senior Battery Application Engineer at Elysia – Battery Intelligence, delivered a talk to Faraday Institution FUSE interns on graduate roles in the battery industry, looking to inspire talented undergraduates to seek out jobs in the sector.
Leaders and participants explain the benefits of the collaboration:
The mutually beneficial partnership between Fortescue ZERO and the Faraday Institution is effectively contributing to talent development for the battery sector. Industry tours inspire and provide insights, PhD internships give first-hand industry experience to academic researchers (with potential for future roles) and Fortescue ZERO representation on a variety of key Faraday Institution panels ensures training and skills programmes are tailored to meet industry need.”
Francesca Long, Head of Education and Talent Development, Faraday Institution
From our experience, we’ve seen huge value from Faraday PhD interns as they can ramp up to productivity much faster than is typical. They bring transferable analytical skills and tend to ‘jump in the deep end’ with a high degree of independence. We’ve also seen a strong cultural fit between Faraday researchers and the Elysia development team in that we share a common vision, a culture of personal empowerment, and the fortitude to break new ground in the battery space.”
Tim Engstrom, Manager for Advanced Battery Technologies, Fortescue ZERO
I thoroughly enjoyed the internship with Fortesue ZERO. It was the highlight of my PhD, and it would never have happened without the careers event that the Faraday Institution organised or all the work the team have done for the cohort over the years.”
Jacob Dean, former Faraday Institution PhD researcher and now Data Scientist at Fortescue ZERO
During my placement at Fortescue ZERO, I was able to explore aspects of battery modelling that weren’t directly part of my PhD and learn from experts in the field. I gained experience of working in the battery industry and have made connections that will help me in my career after I graduate.”
Nicole Melzack, PhD Researcher
The Industry Fellowship between Imperial and Fortescue ZERO that collaboratively published a critical review paper on battery lifetime extension supported me in securing my academic position.”
Dr Haijun Ruan, Assistant Professor of Battery Systems, Coventry University
Read more
Read more about how an Industry Fellowship between Fortescue ZERO and Imperial led to the go-to resource for companies seeking how to best use derating strategies to extend battery lifetime.
The Faraday Institution welcomes approaches at any time from UK-based companies that wish to become more integrated into Faraday Institution research projects and its community. Contact [email protected] in the first instance.
Case study published February 2024 and updated September 2025.