About Don

Donald R. Sadoway
John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ph.D., Chemical Metallurgy, University of Toronto, 1977
M.A.Sc., Chemical Metallurgy, University of Toronto, 1973
B.A.Sc., Engineering Science, University of Toronto, 1972

“It is time to abandon the paradigm of researching scarce, expensive battery chemistries with the unrealistic expectation that the market will pay whatever the cost – and time to look beyond poorly designed technologies that require full life support systems to function safely. We need to develop storage solutions that are made of earth-abundant, domestically available raw materials built into designs that are inherently safe and easily scalable. We need to wipe the slate clean and look beyond incumbents and incremental approaches to visualize a new realm of energy storage invention – guided by reason, common sense, and cost-driven discovery.”

 – Professor Donald R. Sadoway
John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry at MIT

Sadoway is widely recognized as a leading battery and energy storage expert. In addition to his teaching responsibilities he also currently manages Group Sadoway: Extreme Electrochemistry, a research group consisting of about 30 people including postdoctoral associates, visiting scientists, technical staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Research interests of Group Sadoway include liquid metal batteries, metals production by molten oxide electrolysis, rechargeable solid polymer batteries, and aluminum-ion batteries. His current research sponsors include ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), the French energy company Total, S.A., the Office of Naval Research, and Weatherford. He is a founder of the Liquid Metal Battery Corporation, an early-stage company that develops new battery technology for grid-scale electricity storage. LMBC funding comes from Bill Gates, Total, S.A., and Khosla Ventures. On February 29, 2012, Sadoway delivered a TED talk on the topic of inventing the liquid metal battery. In April of 2012 he was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.