Professor Kim See joins RASEI

Daniel Morton — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 22:12:09 +0000

Professor Kim See joins RASEI Daniel Morton Wed, 08/06/2025 - 16:12

Daniel Morton

Effective and sustainable energy storage is critical to a modern and resilient power grid. Independent of how electricity is generated, the ability to flexibly store and supply electricity strengthens the grid. Batteries are a key component of these storage technologies; they are responsive at the flick of a switch and in some cases can free up precious resources such as water.

The Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE) are excited to announce that Professor Kimberly See, from the California Institute of Technology, will be joining the faculty of the University of Colorado 51��ý as a RASEI Fellow with an appointment in ChBE in August of 2026. Professor See is a leading materials scientist who is developing innovative ways to enhance the performance of tomorrows sustainable batteries.

The path to a resilient and sustainable energy economy runs directly through better batteries. Today’s power grid demands storage solutions that are more efficient, built from materials that are abundant, affordable, and environmentally responsible. This intersection of performance and sustainability is one of the most exciting frontiers in energy research, where materials science discoveries can directly impact our current, and future, energy economies.

Battery storage offers exceptional flexibility to a modern power grid, providing rapid response capabilities that can balance supply and demand within seconds rather than minutes or hours. The extensive storage requirements of our grid necessitate a diverse range of solutions, including hydropower storage. However, as water becomes more precious there is increasing competition between energy storage needs and other critical uses like drinking water and agriculture. Futhermore, hydropower also requires specific geographic features (you can’t put dams anywhere and everywhere) and massive infrastructure investments. Thus, battery systems which can be deployed essentially anywhere, from urban centers to remote locations, create opportunities for more resilient and distributed grids.

The See Group has been successfully exploring the performance of batteries and electrochemical devices and processes from a materials science perspective for over a decade now.

At its core, battery performance is fundamentally a materials challenge – how atoms arrange, how electrons move, and how ions travel through carefully engineered structures. Materials science research provides the opportunity to design battery components at the molecular level to achieve faster charging, longer lifespans, and higher energy densities, features that are going to be critical as we scale up our grid level storage needs.

Tell me more!

The See Group

Recent Solid State Redox Chemistry Paper

Recent Solid State Ionics Paper

Recent Electrode Energy Density Paper

Recent New Electrolytes Paper

Research in the See Group has developed solutions to some of these materials science challenges. Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries work by shuttling lithium ions between two sides of the battery during charging and discharging. Think of it like cars moving between parking lots (the negative (cathode) and positive (anode) electrodes), where more cars parked (the Li-ions) means more energy available. When you discharge the battery, the lithium ions travel between lots through an electrolyte highway (the ionically conductive but electronically insulating electrolyte), but they have to pay a toll, giving up an electron. The electrons are forced to take a separate route, powering your devices. However, repeated use can cause these carefully engineered materials to degrade—the ‘parking lots’ break down, the ‘highway’ deteriorates, and ions, or ‘cars’ can get stuck. The See Group uses cutting-edge materials research to improve all these components: developing better storage media, more durable electrolytes, and exploring alternatives to lithium using abundant metals like iron. By taking this holistic approach, the group has demonstrated how different elements of battery design work together to create more efficient and sustainable energy storage systems.

Simply scaling up current Li-ion battery technology cannot meet the massive storage needs of a modern grid, using a deep fundamental understanding of how the chemistries and processes in a battery operate will be key in designing new, faster charging, longer lasting, and higher density batteries.

Professor See joined Caltech in 2017 as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and was promoted to full Professor in 2025. Prior to that Kim was a St. Elmo Brady Future Faculty Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, working with Andrew Gewirth on the electrolytes in lithium- and magnesium-based batteries. Kim’s graduate studies were carried out at the University of California, Santa Barara, advised by Ram Seshadri and Galen Stucky exploring next-generation batteries, receiving her Ph.D. in 2014. Kim received her B.S. in Chemistry just down the road at the Colorado School of Mines.

“Her groundbreaking research in energy storage and electrochemistry seamlessly aligns with RASEI’s mission and will enhance our collaborations both within the university and with NREL. I am extremely confident that Professor See will serve as a catalyst for transformative research, educational initiatives, and interdisciplinary partnerships.”
- Seth Marder, Director of RASEI

A central pillar of RASEI is bringing together interdisciplinary scientists and engineers to work on some of the most tough challenges in energy, and the See Group are no strangers to collaboration. The nature of the challenges tackled by Kim has led her to collaborate extensively, exemplified by her teams engagement across a number of large center-scale team sciences, including the Center for Strain Optimization for Renewable Energy (STORE a DOE Energy Earthshots Center), Synthetic Control Across Length-Scales for Advancing Rechargeables (SCALAR, a DOE Energy Frontiers Research Center), The Center for Synthetic Organic Electrochemistry (CSOE, an NSF Center for Chemical Innovation), and the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA, a DOE Hub).

RASEI is excited to welcome a new collaborator, “On behalf of the entire RASEI community, we are delighted that Professor Kim See has accepted an offer to join our faculty at the University of Colorado 51��ý through RASEI and ChBE” explained Seth Marder, Director of RASEI “Her groundbreaking research in energy storage and electrochemistry seamlessly aligns with RASEI’s mission and will enhance our collaborations both within the university and with NREL. I am extremely confident that Professor See will serve as a catalyst for transformative research, educational initiatives, and interdisciplinary partnerships.”

“The department is thrilled to be able to welcome Kim as a new colleague” said Ryan Hayward, chair of ChBE. “She is a leader in electrochemistry and electrochemical devices whose expertise complements existing strengths in the department and across campus in this critically important area. I know she will be a fantastic addition to ChBE, RASEI, and CU.”

The arrival of the See group comes at a decisive time: demand for electricity is growing rapidly and this requires modern robust energy transmission and storage systems across the grid. Kim’s research expertise, combined with RASEI’s collaborative environment and engagement with NREL, positions the community well to make significant contributions to the battery storage challenges that will be crucial in the next decade of development in energy infrastructure.

We look forward to welcoming Professor See and the group to the research community here at CU 51��ý and NREL! With Kim joining our ranks we are not just gaining an outstanding research colleague, we are opening doors to new avenues of investigation that we expect to accelerate research in sustainable energy storage, a critical piece in the transition to a clean and resilient energy economy. We will encourage the whole community to connect with the See Group when they join next year.

August 2025

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