This symposium invites contributions on the development and implementation of safe materials as a key enabler of reliable, high-performance, and sustainable battery systems. As the electrification of our world accelerates, addressing safety challenges—from thermal runaway to longterm degradation—is essential across all chemistries and formats.
This includes solid-state, lithium-metal, lithium-sulfur, and aqueous batteries, as well as next-generation anode- or cobalt-free designs. Relevant topics span thermally stable and non-toxic electrolytes and separators, SEI and interface stability, degradation diagnostics, multiscale failure modelling, and data-driven safety prediction. The symposium also welcomes strategies that integrate safe-by-design principles with sustainability, circularity, and advanced manufacturing.
- Battery Safety
- Understanding the Interfaces and SEI stability
- Characterisation of battery materials
- Theory and Multiscale modelling
- Beyond Li-ion
- Materials innovations
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Dr Anthony Chun Yin Yuen acquired his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney in 2015. He is a newly appointed Associate Professor (Presidential Young Scholar) at the Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPolyU) in 2023.
Dr Yuen's research focuses on the development of advanced fire retardant materials with the aid of atomistic modelling techniques to characterise the in-depth flame retardant mechanisms such as charring, radical scavenging and vapourisation. Additionally, he focuses on the development of fire models to describe the flaming and degradation processes, charring and self-extinction behaviours of advanced materials, aiming to improve the fire resilience of building and construction and energy storage systems.
Dr Yuen is recognised as Top 2% Scientist Worldwide in consecutive years 2023 & 2024 by Stanford University and Elsevier Data Repository and published 5 highly cited papers. Dr Yuen has >150 SCI journals and 3 book chapters, with an H-index of 46 & >7,300 citations (Google Scholar). Also, he is an Editorial Board Member for SCI journals Nature Scientific Report & Discovery Applied Science and a Topical Advisory Panel Member for Polymers. Additionally, he is a coorporate member of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE) Fire Dicipline (Engineer Prefix title "Ir").
Professor Qiong Cai is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Professor in Sustainable Energy and Materials at the University of Surrey. She received BEng and MEng degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University, a PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh and subsequently carried out postdoctoral research at Imperial College London prior to joining Surrey. Her research focuses on multiscale materials design for sustainable energy conversion and storage including batteries, electrolysers, and catalytic chemical conversion for achieving net-zero. Her research has been funded by various funding bodies including UKRI EPSRC, Faraday Institution, SUPERGEN H2FC Hub, Horizon Europe, Royal Society, Henry Royce Institute and industry. Currently, she is the work package leader for AI-assisted multiscale modelling on the Horizon Europe funded OPERA consortium, and the hydrogen end use theme leader on the UK Hub for Research Challenges in Hydrogen and Alternative Liquid Fuels (UK-HyRES). She has published 160 peer-reviewed journal papers and supervised 17 PhD students and 12 postdocs as the primary supervisor. She is the Associate Editor of ASME Journal of Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage and sits at the Strategic Advisory Board for the UK GW-SHIFT and EU FULL-MAP consortiums.
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Aigerim OmirkhanClaire VillevieilleDr Yang Xu is an Associate Professor in Energy Storage in the Department of Chemistry at University College London (UCL). He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He carried out his postdoctoral research at Boston College (US) and the University of Alberta (Canada) and then worked as a Senior Scientist at Technical University of Ilmenau (Germany). He joined the Department of Chemistry at University College London (UCL) as an Assistant Professor in 2019 and became an Associate Professor in 2023. He is leading a team at UCL Chemistry working on next-generation battery materials and chemistries, particularly potassium-based, focusing on high energy density cathode materials, cation intercalation mechanism, metal anodes, and anionic redox activity. He has had nearly 90 publications in internationally leading journals including J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Joule, Matter, Nat. Commun., Energy Environ. Sci., Adv. Mater., etc. He has received research fundings from various funders including the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Faraday Institution, the Royal Society (RS), the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the Leverhulme Trust, and UCL. He was awarded the MINE Outstanding Young Scientist Award (2019), the RS Short Industry Fellowship (2020) and the STFC Early Career Award (2023). He serves as a member of the editorial boards of JPhys. Energy (IOPP) and ACS Appl. Energy Mater. (ACS), the advisory boards of J. Mater. Chem. A and Mater. Adv. (RSC), and the youth editorial boards of Sci. China Mater. (Springer) and eScience (Elsevier).
Wei Yu received his Ph.D. in material science and engineering from Tsinghua University in 2018 with Prof. Feiyu Kang. He then did his postdoctoral research for two years with Prof. Ce-Wen Nan, also at Tsinghua University. In November 2020, he joined Prof. Hirotomo Nishihara’s group at Tohoku University as a specially appointed assistant professor and was promoted to assistant professor in April 2023. His research interests include the development of high-performance electrodes/electrolytes and the design of in situ battery characterization systems for advanced batteries.