Caltech: #SoCaltech: Kimberly See — Caltech Magazine

Press release from California Institute of Technology:

“I was always really interested in energy research. I think, like a lot of young scientists, you see the climate crisis, and you see the issues that we have with our energy infrastructure, and you want to fix those problems. That's why I ended up going to grad school and studying science in general. I'm a chemist by training, and I saw chemistry as a way to help solve these problems. When I got to grad school, I had some background in electrochemistry, having done a bit of research in electrochemical water splitting. This is taking water and splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen. I knew I really liked electrochemistry, and I also really liked solid-state chemistry. This is understanding how solids react, what the atoms and electrons do within a solid if we perturb them in some way. Batteries were the perfect marriage between those two disciplines, between electrochemistry and solid-state chemistry. I got really lucky in grad school [at UC Santa Barbara]. I worked for an adviser who had a project in battery chemistry. ...[W]hen I went to grad school, I didn't even know that people researched batteries. You might think that batteries are a solved problem. I have five state-of-the-art Li-ion batteries in my house at any one time, so why is there research still going on there? I was excited to learn about how batteries can fit into the bigger picture of sustainability and also how we can think about making batteries better and more sustainable. I was able to marry these two fundamental interests into something that I was passionate about on a personal level.”

Kimberly See, assistant professor of chemistry, in her recent discussion with science writer Emily Velasco entitled, “Beyond Lithium-Ion Batteries,” which was part of the Caltech Science Exchange's Conversations on Sustainability series.

#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.

This press release was produced by California Institute of Technology. The views expressed here are the author’s own.