How an award-winning Halifax professor nurtured a network of battery entrepreneurs
CTV
They call themselves the "Dahn lab" graduates, and they're powering an unlikely, Halifax-based research hub for batteries designed to replace fossil fuels.
They call themselves the "Dahn lab" graduates, and they're powering an unlikely, Halifax-based research hub for batteries designed to replace fossil fuels.
At the tightly wired network's heart is Jeff Dahn, a professor of chemistry and physics at Dalhousie University, who on Oct. 9 was presented with the Olin Palladium Award from the Electrochemical Society for a lifetime of working to improve rechargeable batteries. The prestigious prize has previously been won by Nobel laureates.
According to the award citation, the 66-year-old researcher is an author or co-author of 78 inventions with patents issued or filed, and has trained over 65 PhDs and 30 post-doctoral researchers, many of whom now hold senior positions in battery firms around the globe.
They're scientists who delve deeply into chemistry and physics, yet Dahn describes the mission driving the work in fairly simple social terms. "It's a war on climate change. We need every sensible energy storage technology to store energy from solar and wind," he said after receiving his prize at the Electrochemical Society's biannual gathering in Sweden.
The genesis of the lab goes back to Dahn's early career in the 1980s, working with industry on pioneering lithium-based batteries.
Following his return to Nova Scotia to teach, he leveraged this background into a partnership with Tesla in 2016. That's brought a steady series of breakthroughs to improve the longevity, safety and energy density -- the amount of energy stored in a given space -- of the firm's battery cells.
Today, the professor says there are 40 people at his Dalhousie lab, two new professors have been hired to "take over" when he eventually retires, and the storehouse of battery intelligence is flowing among his former acolytes as they seek ways to increase battery lifetimes.
