MS&E student, Seamus Ober, was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.

The NSF GRFP is the country’s oldest fellowship program that directly supports graduate students in various STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields. Since 1952, NSF has funded over 50,000 Graduate Research Fellowships out of more than 500,000 applicants. Currently, 42 Fellows have gone on to become Nobel laureates, and more than 450 have become members of the National Academy of Sciences.

Seamus is a Ph.D. student in Dr. Arumugam Manthiram's research group. He is studying Lithium Nickel Oxide (LNO), a promising prospective cathode material to eliminate Cobalt from lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) due to its higher energy capacity and lower cost. LNO and other Nickel-rich layered oxide materials suffer from poor cycling stability, meaning they rapidly lose capacity with repeated charging and discharging of LIBs. Currently, he is researching the effects of adding small concentrations of Niobium as a dopant to LNO, as this method has led to demonstrable improvements in cycling stability and other electrochemical properties for certain Nickel-rich materials but has not yet been investigated for LNO. Improved cycling stability, combined with the high energy density intrinsic to LNO, would help to unlock this material's full potential as a cathode in the next generation of energy-dense LIBs.

Please help us in congratulating Seamus!