Susan Babinec

Babinec completed a degree in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin.[1]

Babinec spent the first twenty years of her career at Dow Chemical Company, where she worked as a senior electrochemist.[2] She was honored as Inventor of the Year, and the first woman corporate fellow.[2] At Dow, Babinec worked on cathode electrodes for lithium ion batteries. She investigated how the binder and porosity of the electrodes impacted the electrochemical and mechanical properties.[3] She co-invented a low cost display technology that became a venture-funded start-up. She became frustrated by Dow's lack of investment in new technologies, and moved to A123, a company who were pursuing new battery materials.[1] When A123 found a defect in one of their batteries, they were forced to recall products, which resulted in the company going bankrupt.[1]

Babinec joined the United States Department of Energy ARPA-E program that looked to support energy projects.[1] During her six years at ARPA-E, Babinec invested $120 million into battery companies, including Natron Energy, Sila Nanotechnologies and Ion Storage Systems.[1]

In 2019, Babinec was appointed to Argonne National Laboratory's grid energy storage program.[4][5] She looks to optimize energy storage capabilities by integrating grid design with industry needs.[4] To better understand battery materials, she developed rapid life cycle evaluations and pioneered the use of artificial intelligence.[6] She launched the Battery Data Genome project, a challenge to collect, store and share usable information from every stage of the battery lifecycle.[7][8] The Battery Data Genome Project looks to transform understanding about electric vehicles.[9][10]

• Albertus, Paul; Babinec, Susan; Litzelman, Scott; Newman, Aron (2017-12-18). "Status and challenges in enabling the lithium metal electrode for high-energy and low-cost rechargeable batteries". Nature Energy. 3 (1): 16–21. doi:10.1038/s41560-017-0047-2. ISSN 2058-7546. S2CID 256703528.
• Caldwell, W. Brett; Chen, Kaimin; Mirkin, Chad A.; Babinec, Susan J. (August 1993). "Self-assembled monolayer films of fullerene C60 on cysteamine-modified gold". Langmuir. 9 (8): 1945–1947. doi:10.1021/la00032a002. ISSN 0743-7463.

Babinec is an athlete, and has played competitively since her time at college.[11]