June 13-15 at UMD in College Park, MD

Reservations at Hotel Cambria near MEII Office

Draft Agenda includes:

• Visit to Ion Storage Systems
• Visit to Saft Cockeysville site
• Project planning meetings with a focus on strengthening collaborations
• Possible team building activity

From left to right: Carine Steinway (Saft), Greg Hitz (ISS), Robert Briber (UMD), Samuel Graham (UMD), Eitan Yudilevich, Paul Albertus (UMD), Eric Wachsman (UMD), Keith Gregorczyk (UMD), and Barry Bogage (MD/Israel Development)

BIRD Foundation Executive Director, Dr. Eitan Yudilevich, visited the University of Maryland on October 5th, 2021, to learn more about the activities on the U.S. side of the $18.4M, five-year Energy Storage Consortium that was awarded by the U.S.-Israel Energy Center in 2020 and is managed by the BIRD Foundation. Representatives from UMD (the U.S. lead) and consortium member partners, including Ion Storage Systems and Saft, discussed their current and planned research and commercialization activities on solid state battery components and cells.  In addition, Dr. Yudilevich met with UMD’s A. James Clark Engineering School leadership to discuss potential future areas of interest for the BIRD foundation sponsors, and the academic / industrial consortium model used in the U.S.-Israel Energy Center.

The goal of the U.S.-Israel Energy Center is to promote energy security and economic development through the research and development of innovative technologies. The Energy Center is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and by the Israel Ministry of Energy, jointly with the Israel Innovation Authority.  Partners in the U.S. include U.S. lead, the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute (MEI²), Saft and Ion Storage Systems.  In Israel, academic partners include Bar Ilan and Tel Aviv Universities, and company participants include 3DB and Materials Zone.

The proposed innovation consists of solid-state batteries that use either lithium or sodium metal as the anode material; these batteries offer a breakthrough in terms of energy per unit mass and volume at the cell level (>30% improvement vs. current Li-ion batteries), cost (by increasing energy density and using low-cost materials), safety (by use of electrolyte materials with improved intrinsic thermal stability), and an ability to serve numerous end-use sectors including specialized applications such as aerospace, as well as larger markets in transportation and stationary storage.  The cooperative project will focus on advancing the science and development of solid state batteries, including work on advanced coatings, cell components, cells, and materials informatics software, for both Na and Li metal batteries.