Science at the Local - May 2024 (Batteries & Pleiades star cluster)

Sustainability in energy storage: lithium-ion batteries and beyond

Prof. Neeraj Sharma, 
University of New South Wales (UNSW)
Director, Australian Battery Society

The World’s Oldest Story? The Seven Sister cluster of stars in Greek and Aboriginal mythology
Prof. Ray NORRIS
CSIRO Astronomy & Space Science
Western Sydney University

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About the speakers:

Neeraj completed his Ph.D. at the University of Sydney then moved to the Bragg Institute at Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) for a post-doc. He started at the School of Chemistry, UNSW on a Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE) Research Fellowship followed by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA). He is currently an Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow. Neeraj has been the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI) Nyholm Youth Lecturer (2013/2014) and has won the NSW Premiers Prize for Science and Engineering (Early Career Researcher in Physical Sciences, 2019), Australian Synchrotron Research Award (2018), RACI Rennie Memorial Medal for Chemical Science (2018), UNSW Postgraduate Supervisor Award (2017) and a NSW Young Tall Poppy Award (2014). Neeraj has over 165 publications and has been invited to present his work at over 30 conferences. Neeraj’s research interests are based on solid state chemistry, designing new materials and investigating their structure-property relationships. He loves to undertake in situ or operando experiments of materials inside full devices, especially batteries, in order to elucidate the structural subtleties that lead to superior performance parameters. Neeraj’s projects are typically highly collaborative working with colleagues from all over the world with a range of skillsets.

Ray is a British/Australian astronomer with CSIRO Astronomy & Space Science and Western Sydney University, who researches how galaxies formed and evolved after the Big Bang, and also researches the astronomy of  Aboriginal Australians. He frequently appears on radio and TV, featured in the stage show "The First Astronomers" with Wardaman elder Bill Yidumduma Harney, and has written the novel "Graven Images".  He was educated at Cambridge University, and University of Manchester, UK, and moved to Australia to join CSIRO, where he became Head of Astrophysics in 1994, and then Deputy Director of the Australia Telescope, and Director of the Australian Astronomy Major National Research Facility, before returning in 2005 to active research. He currently leads an international project (EMU, or Evolutionary Map of the Universe) to understand the origin and evolution of galaxies, using the new Australian SKA Pathfinder radio-telescope nearing completion in Western Australia, and is also pioneering the WTF project to discover the unexpected in astronomical data.