Chibueze Amanchukwu is a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and holds a joint appointment at Argonne National Laboratory.
His research is focused on enabling long duration electrical (batteries) and chemical energy storage for a sustainable energy future. His team is especially interested in modifying electrolyte and ion solvation behavior to control electrochemical processes occurring in batteries and electrocatalytic transformations such as carbon dioxide capture and conversion. They couple data science, computation, synthesis, and characterization to holistically understand ion transport in electrolytes and control interfacial reactions for efficient and cheap long duration storage.
His work has been recognized with the NSF CAREER Award, DOE Early Career Award, ECS-Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship, CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar Award, and the 3M Nontenured Faculty Award. He obtained his PhD in chemical engineering as a NDSEG Fellow at MIT and was a TomKat Center Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University.
Interested in joining the Amanchukwu Lab?
The Amanchukwu Lab is actively recruiting graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and undergraduates to join us on the quest for designing and understanding next generation electrolytes for batteries and catalysis. You can expect to push boundaries in chemical synthesis, in-situ characterization tools, and electrochemistry. Learn more by visiting the lab page.
Amanchukwu Lab's mission at PME is to creatively solve energy-related challenges, especially focused on energy storage and electrocatalysis. Within energy storage and electrocatalytic devices, electrolytes are a vital component that support ionic and molecular transport. The Amanchukwu Lab is focused on the design and synthesis of novel electrolyte media (solid state and liquid), and the study of electrolyte instability and ionic transport phenomena for applications in batteries and electrocatalysis. Borrowing concepts from chemistry and tools from biology, we aim to control interfacial phenomena at the electrode/electrolyte interface, understand degradation mechanisms, and use advanced characterizations tools (especially at Argonne National Lab) for in situ and operando understanding of energy devices.