Administrative support: Manna Jiang and Keturah Mitchell-McCall.
Y. Shirley Meng is a professor of molecular engineering at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. She also serves as the chief scientist of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS) Argonne National Laboratory and director of the Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA).
Her work pioneers in discovering and designing better materials for energy storage by a unique combination of first-principles computation guided materials discovery and design, and advanced characterization with electron/neutron/photon sources. Meng is the principal investigator of the research group - Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC). She has received several prestigious awards, including the Faraday Medal of Royal Chemistry Society (2020), International Battery Association Battery IBA Research Award (2019), Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Finalist (2018), C.W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of the Electrochemical Society (2016), Science Award Electrochemistry by BASF and Volkswagen (2014) and NSF CAREER Award (2011). Meng is the elected fellow of Electrochemical Society (FECS) and elected fellow of Materials Research Society (FMRS). She serves as the editor-in-chief for Materials Research Society MRS Energy & Sustainability Journal.
Meng received her PhD in Advanced Materials for Micro & Nano Systems from the Singapore-MIT Alliance in 2005, and her bachelor’s degree with first-class honor from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2000. She worked as a postdoctoral research fellow and became a research scientist at MIT from 2005-2007. Meng was the Zable Endowed Chair Professor in Energy Technologies at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) before joining PME at the University of Chicago.
Meng’s research focuses primarily on energy storage materials and systems – including rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles and trucks, power sources for Internet of Things (IOTs), as well as grid-scale storage for deep renewable energy penetration.