Chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Theresa Schoetz has received two grants to further her research on flexible and photo-charging batteries.
The Engineering & Biosciences Institute – Shell partnership has provided Schoetz and Co-principal investigator and material sciences & engineering professor Paul Braun a grant for their project, “Direct Grid-Energy Conversion and Storage with Photo-Charging Batteries”. This research aims to develop photo-charging batteries to efficiently store energy captured from solar panels.
The second grant is from the Joint Research and Innovation Seed Grant Program, which is a joint venture between The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Illinois System. Schoetz will work with professor Daniel Mandler in Israel on their work, “Reinvention of the Electrochemical Interface Enabling Flexible Batteries for Wearable Electronics”. Their project focuses on next-generation battery designs that utilize covalently bonded composites produced from a molecular-sized electrolyte layer that is chemically bonded to the electrode surface. This technology would make wearable batteries smaller and more flexible.
Schoetz earned her B.Eng. from Brandenburgische Technische Universität (Hochschule Lausitz), Germany (2013), M.Sc. from Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany (2016), and Ph.D. University of Southampton, UK (2019). Before joining the ChBE Illinois faculty in 2023, Schoetz was a postdoc at the University of Southampton and a Research Associate at The City College of New York, CUNY.