Donald Sadoway Speaker & Booking Information

Donald Robert Sadoway born 7 March 1950 is the current John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A faculty member in the Department of Materials Science Engineering, he is a noted expert on batteries and has done significant research on how to improve the performance and longevity of portable power sources. As a researcher, Sadoway has focused on environmental ways to extract metals from their ores, as well as producing more efficient batteries. His research has often been driven by the desire to reduce the carbon pollution output by various industries. He is the co-inventor of a solid polymer electrolyte. This material, used in his "sLimcell" has the capability of allowing batteries to offer twice as much power per kilogram as is possible in current lithium ion batteries. In August 2006, a team that he led demonstrated the feasibility of extracting iron from its ore through molten oxide electrolysis. When powered exclusively by renewable electricity, this technique has the potential to eliminate the carbon dioxide emissions that are generated through traditional methods. In 2009, Sadoway proposed a very low cost molten salt battery based on magnesium and antimony separated by a salt that could be used in stationary energy storage systems. Research on this concept was being funded by ARPA-E, Total S.A. and others, including Bill Gates. Experimental data showed a 69% DC-to-DC storage efficiency with good storage capacity and relatively low leakage. In 2010, Sadoway and two others, David Bradwell and Luiz Ortiz, co-founded a company called Ambri in order to scale up and commercialise the technology. They planned to have a commercial prototype built in 2014. For 16 years Professor Sadoway taught 3.091 Introduction to Solid State Chemistry at MIT, one of the largest classes at MIT. Sadoway's animated teaching style was popular with students and freshman enrollment in the course steadily increased through 2010. Professor Sadoway's lectures often included the history of science, especially with respect to the Nobel Prize. Sadoway gave out "library assignments" in which he asked students to research Nobel Prize–winning papers. He began his lectures by playing music, which has some connection with the lecture's material. He ended his lectures with five minutes of culturally relevant material, such as automotive exhaust processing or forensic examination of paintings.