Advanced Energy Materials Group
Welcome Jaimini Mistry! New PhD starting in the group. Jaimini will develop high energy density flow batteries. She is part of the new Faraday Institution PhD cohort, funded partially the Faraday Institution, Invinity and QMUL.
During IFL 2026 held at QMUL Carlos and Michael gave great flash talks at the PDRA symposium and Maadri won the prize to the best poster for the Centre for Sustainable Engienering. Congratulations, Maadri!!
We had an amazing representation of the group at this year’s ISE held in Sydney. Maadri, Natalia and Michael all gave great talks on their work on sustainable approaches to next-generation batteries. Well done, everyone!
Ana gave an invited talk at the NanoSeries 2026 conference held in Turin, Italy, in June 2026. In her talk, Ana presented the last work of the group on electrospun sustainable electrodes for flow batteries.
Congratulations Jesus! Jesus passed his PhD viva on the 26 March 2026 with minor corrections. Thanks so much to his examiners, Suela Kellici from Southbank University and Maria Crespo from QMUL for their time and insightful discussions! Jesus’ PhD project explored the use of carbon dots / C electrospun fibres as electrodes in supercapacitors and for antimicrobial applications. We wish you the best in your new career stage at Super6, where Jesus will be developing next-generation supercapacitors.
Maadri, Natalia and Michael presented their work at the ECR Faraday conference at Warwick University (24-25 March 2026). Maadri presented her work on using textile-based materials as electrodes for flow batteries. Natalia talked about her electrospun yarns as alternative approach to explore 3D-structured electrodes for flow batteries. Michael presented his work on freestanding sulfur electrodes for Li-S batteries, the focus of his EPSRC postdoctoral fellowship. Well done everyone!
The group was represented at the UK Flow Battery Network Annual Meeting held at the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre at the University of Manchester on the 2nd February 2026. Ana as part of the UK Flow Battery Network committee chaired the first session of invited talks. Maadri, Natalia and Haoyuan presented their posters on designing freestanding electrodes for flow batteries. It was great to hear updates from the flow battery community and look forward to the next meeting.
Ana presented her work on sustainable electrodes for flow batteries at the 2026 joint Thomas Young Centre and Lennard-Jones Centre conference, highlighting areas where computational tools are key in order to optimise the performance of flow battery electrode materials. Electrodes need to exhibit tailored surface chemistry that enables fast kinetics, but at the same time they must have a 3D porous structure that allows the electrolyte flow through them effectively.
This year we celebrated Christmas locally, in East London. At 2pm, we did a mistery hunt around Aldgate and Whitechapel to solve a series of murders by Jack The Ripper! We completed it in record time! Well done everyone! 🙂 Then, we went to a pub and had some nibbles and drinks, and open our Secret Santa’s presents – this year the theme was “what makes you merry!” Everyone had a fantastic time!
Ana had a fantastic time in Lancaster University. A day full of meetings with academics, learning about exciting research activities going on there! I enjoyed visiting the facilities and answering all the questions from the audience! Thanks so much for the invitation.