About
Rebecca Ciez
Postdoctoral Researcher, Columbia University
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Earth and Ecological Engineering, Purdue University (starting fall 2020)
Rebecca Ciez is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University who will be starting as an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Earth and Ecological Engineering at Purdue University in Fall 2020.
She received a Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon, holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University, and spent time as a postdoc at Princeton's Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. Her research focuses on the intersection of performance, technology adoption, and public policy for energy technologies. Much of her work examines electrochemical energy storage, and the role that it can play in decarbonizing the electricity and transportation sectors.
About the talk: Transportation and electricity systems are two of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions globally. Energy storage technologies, especially batteries, are poised to play a substantial role in both of these sectors. Given the scope of the challenge, and the diversity of applications, it is imperative that we design storage technologies that are suitable for vehicles and the changing demands of the electricity grid. Storage must also be inexpensive enough to be widely adopted while minimizing the environmental impacts of manufacturing and disposal. Focusing on lithium-ion batteries—the incumbent energy storage technology—this talk will discuss methods and outcomes to analyze technologies with these competing goals. Process-based cost modeling methods and results show which attributes are most significant to reducing the cell-level battery cost. Life cycle assessment highlights the limitations of current battery recycling methods, and the tension between incentives for low upfront cost technology and profitable recycling methods.
New Energy: Conversations with Early-Career Energy Researchers is a new online series featuring graduate, post-doctoral, and other early-career researchers sharing their discoveries and perspectives on energy-related topics. From policy to analysis to emerging research, this bi-weekly series will give anyone interested in energy the opportunity to learn from the rising stars in the field.
This series is a collaborative effort between professors at Dartmouth College's Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society and the following colleges and universities: Arizona State University, Northeastern University, Carnegie Mellon University, Penn State University, Cornell University, Stanford University, Columbia University, Technical University of Denmark, Duke University, Tufts University's Center for Environmental and Resource Policy, ETH Zurich, University of Cambridge, Indiana University's Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and the University of Vermont's Gund Institute for Environment