Associate Professor
Betar Gallant
Class of 1922 Career Development Professor
Interests
- Li and Ca anodes for beyond Li-ion rechargeable batteries
- High-energy primary (non-rechargeable) batteries for medical applications
- Electrochemical CO2 mitigation
Professor Gallant News + Media
Removing carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust
Assistant Professor Betar Gallant is developing a battery that could both capture carbon dioxide in power plant exhaust and convert it to a solid ready for safe disposal.
New battery gobbles up carbon dioxide
A lithium-based battery developed by Assistant Professor Betar Gallant could be made partly from carbon dioxide captured from power plants, helping reduce greenhouse gas emission.
Tackling Greenhouse Gases
Faculty in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering are developing technologies that store, capture, convert, and minimize greenhouse gas emissions using a variety of approaches.
Faculty Details
Education
-
2008
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT)
S.B. -
2010
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT)
S.M. -
2013
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT)
Ph.D.
Research Interests
- Li and Ca anodes and their solid electrolyte interphases (SEI)
- Electrolyte design for beyond Li-ion batteries
- Thermodynamics and thermochemistry of cation coordination in nonaqueous electrolytes
- Design of new chemistries for high-energy Li primary batteries
- Integration of CO2 capture with electrochemical conversion
- CO2 separation - advanced processes, materials, and applications
Bio
Betar Gallant is an Associate Professor and the American Bureau of Shipping Career Development Professor in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Dr. Gallant completed her SB (‘08), SM (‘10) and PhD (‘13) degrees in the same department. After graduating, Dr. Gallant was a Kavli Nanoscience Institute Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltech in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. As a faculty member at MIT, Dr. Gallant leads the Energy and Gas Conversion Laboratory, which focuses on advanced battery chemistries and materials for high-energy rechargeable and primary batteries, including fluorinated cathode conversion reactions and lithium and calcium metal anodes and their interfaces. Her research is also developing insights into reaction mechanisms that underpin advanced greenhouse gas mitigation technologies, with a particular emphasis on integration of electrochemistry with CO2 capture and storage. Her group has pioneered the scientific framework behind use of amine capture sorbents in electrochemical environments subject to direct reductive conversion, driving CO2 to products or storage phases, which has potential to contribute to alternatives of today’s energy-intensive thermal regeneration processes. Dr. Gallant is the recipient of multiple awards including an MIT Bose Fellow, Army Research Office Young Investigator Award, Scialog Fellow in Energy Storage and in Negative Emissions Science, NSF CAREER Award, the Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching at MIT, and the Electrochemical Society Battery Division Early Career award.
Honors + Awards
- 2022, ECS Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship
- 2021, ECS Battery Division Early Career Award
- 2021, National Science Foundation CAREER Award
- 2020, Student best poster award, Next Generation Batteries, ISE 71st Meeting
- 2020, Scialog Fellow, Negative Emissions Science
- 2019, Scialog Fellow, Advanced Energy Storage, 2019
- 2019, Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching, MIT
- 2019, Army Research Office Young Investigator
- 2019, Student best poster award, Gordon Conference on CO2 Capture, Utilization and Storage, Les Diablerets, Switzerland
- 2016, MIT Bose Research Fellow
- 2013, Kavli Nanoscience Institute Prize Postdoctoral Fellow, California Institute of Technology
- 2011, MIT Martin Family Graduate Fellow
- 2008, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow
- 2008, MIT Energy Initiative Graduate Research Fellow
MIT Service
- MIT MechE Graduate Committee
- MIT MechE Faculty Ambassador to Graduate Students
Teaching
2.005 and 2.006: Thermal Fluids Engineering I and II
2.37: Fundamentals of Nanoengineering