To enable electric vehicles with greater range and electrified aviation, we need batteries with increased energy density that are safer and can last longer.
Weiyu Li is leveraging her expertise in theoretical and computational modeling of electrochemical transport in energy systems to address this challenge. Her research focuses on the development of efficient mathematical models and numerical algorithms that enhance sustainable energy conversion, utilization and de-carbonization.
“With these multiscale models of electrochemical transport, I want to create a battery avatar that combines physics-based models and various data streams,” Li says. “This will yield improved predictions of physico-chemical processes inside battery systems and help guide materials design for the next generation of high-energy-density batteries with enhanced safety and longevity.”
Li will join the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Mechanical Engineering as an Alfred Fritz Assistant Professor in fall 2024. She earned her master’s degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University, and in 2023 she received her PhD in energy science and engineering from Stanford University.
Li is driven by curiosity, which led her to contribute to multiple interdisciplinary research projects early in her PhD before deciding to focus on energy system modeling for her dissertation.
“I was lucky that my PhD advisor was very flexible and open-minded, and he encouraged me to explore different areas,” she says. “So, I worked on a data simulation and smart agriculture project as well as biomedical modeling projects investigating blood transfusion and an approach for treating acute respiratory distress syndrome. I will continue working in these different areas in addition to my main focus on energy system modeling, as they are all related to sustainability.”
For the smart agriculture project, Li developed a new irrigation optimization tool that could help farmers reduce water use, which is important in areas experiencing water scarcity. The tool rapidly estimates water loss from soils due to evapotranspiration, a process that involves the evaporation of water into the atmosphere and the uptake of water by plants. Li developed an algorithm that accelerates the computational time for estimating the evapotranspiration by two orders of magnitude, an advance that could greatly speed up the time needed to plan efficient irrigation schedules.
Prior to joining UW-Madison, Li was a postdoctoral scholar in the Departments of Physics and Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. She says the UW-Madison Department of Mechanical Engineering is an ideal place to establish her lab. “There are many excellent faculty and students at UW-Madison who have similar research interests and complementary expertise, and I’m excited by the opportunities here for interdisciplinary collaboration on diverse projects,” she says.