Professor Ted Sargent – Materials Discovery for Energy and Chemicals Decarbonization

Electrochemical systems are showing increasing promise in the renewables-powered synthesis of fuels and feedstocks. This includes both CO₂ reduction to ethylene, ethanol, methane, and propanol; and also the selective oxidation of hydrocarbons to more valuable products such as ethylene oxide and propylene glycol. This talk discusses progress in such systems, looking at technoeconomics, systems performance, scale, and the materials – the catalysts – that effect the underlying transformation. It also discusses routes to accelerating discovery of these and other catalysts, including with the aid of machine-learning-in-the-loop. This includes A3MD, the Alliance for AI-Accelerated Materials Discovery, which unites high-throughput computational screening, robotics, high-throughput characterization, and big data to help advane clean energy technologies.

Ted Sargent received his BSc in Engineering Physics from Queen’s University in 1995 and his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Photonics) from the University of Toronto in 1998. He has been a faculty member at the University of Toronto since 1998 and spent sabbaticals at MIT (Microphotonics Center), UCLA (Fulbright Visiting Professor), Berkeley (Somorjai Visiting Miller Professor), and Harvard (Rowland Institute Visiting Distinguished Scholar). He is University Professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. He serves as Vice President – Research for the University of Toronto. He founded and served as CTO of InVisage Technologies and has received over 60,000 citations on publications he has authored [Scopus].