Research priorities for seasonal energy storage using electrolyzers and fuel cells

Paul A. Kempler is a research assistant professor at the University of Oregon and the Associate Director for the Oregon Center for Electrochemistry (OCE). At the OCE, he has developed three graduate laboratory courses in electrochemistry and electrochemical engineering and serves as the liaison to industry partners. His current research interests include interfacial ion transfer in energy conversion and the technoeconomic analysis of decarbonized energy systems. Paul received his PhD in chemical engineering from the California Institute of Technology for research on catalyst integration and gas evolution in photoelectrochemical cells for water splitting. John James Slack is a senior scientist at Nikola Corporation. John specializes in developing novel materials, studying their interactions, and designing nanostructured architectures within fuel cell cores. In the first two years of his career, he authored two successful proposals worth $2.7 million and has co-authored several patents related to advancing the field of fuel cell membrane electrode assemblies. He is active in the fuel cell community, regularly presenting to the Department of Energy and to the Million Mile Fuel Cell Truck Consortium. John's background is in chemical engineering, and he obtained his PhD at Vanderbilt University in 2019. Andrew M. Baker is a senior scientist at Nikola Corporation. His current research is focused on improving the performance and durability of membrane-electrode-assembly materials and accelerated stress test development for heavy-duty PEM fuel cell applications. Prior to working at Nikola, he was a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Delaware in 2017.