2025-26 Precourt 52 funded projects summary
The following research projects were funded by the Precourt Institute for Energy and its programs in the 2025-26 academic year.
Format: Project title, principal investigator and co-PIs, summary slide (when available), Precourt Institute funding program
Data center deliberation: Streamlining development with AI-driven stakeholder engagement
Sarah Billington, Civil & Environmental Engineering; Ashish Goel, Management Science & Engineering; Rishee Jain, Civil & Environmental Engineering; Alice Siu, Freeman Spogli Institute; Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, Energy Science & Engineering
Bits & Watts Initiative
Cooling and waste heat utilization co-design for sustainable data centers
Carlos Díaz Marín, Energy Science & Engineering
Bits & Watts Initiative
A power distribution unit to protect the grid from transients during machine language training
Philip Levis, Computer Science; Juan Rivas-Davila, Electrical Engineering; Ram Rajagopal, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Bits & Watts Initiative
A decision-informed tool for reliable, affordable, secure, and sustainable power for AI
Inês Azevedo, Energy Science & Engineering; Steven Davis, Earth System Science; Carlos Diaz-Marin, Energy Science & Engineering; Edgar Virguez, Energy Science & Engineering
Bits & Watts Initiative
Flexible queues for the AI era: Designing location- and flexibility-based interconnection mechanisms for large loads
Omer Karaduman, GSB
Bits & Watts Initiative
Investigating the interconnection of power grid capacity expansion with data center siting and operation
Meagan Mauter, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Photon Science; Bolun Xu, Earth & Environmental Engineering
Bits & Watts Initiative
Evaluating carbon, water, and biodiversity tradeoffs of colocating data centers and pumped storage hydropower in the United States
Sebastian Heilpern, Earth System Science
Bits & Watts Initiative
Full stack optimization of efficiency in AI power delivery through high voltage transmissions and wide bandgap semiconductors
Srabanti Chowdhury, Electrical Engineering
Bits & Watts Initiative and Precourt Institute for Energy gift
Enhancing grid resilience against extreme weather
Ram Rajagopal, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Bits & Watts Initiative
A study of U.S. transmission system utilization factors and national economic load growth zones
Ram Rajagopal, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Bits & Watts Initiative
Improving grid planning using by understanding future large loads growth trajectories and generation colocation opportunities
Ines Azevedo, Energy Science & Engineering
Bits & Watts Initiative
10 gigawatts of clean, firm power for data centers
Sally Benson, Energy Science & Engineering
Bits & Watts Initiative
Quantifying inefficiencies in American electricity supply
Hunt Allcott, Environmental Social Science
Bits & Watts Initiative
Power lines from natural gas: High volume, high conductivity and high strength carbon wires
Adam Boies, Mechanical Engineering; Leora Dresselhaus-Marais, Material Science & Engineering
Center for Fuels of the Future
Flaring as a global source of greenhouse gases: Experimental verification of remote sensing capabilities
Adam Brandt, Energy Science & Engineering
Center for Fuels of the Future
Reformulating industrial sector modeling into commodity demand frameworks in sector-coupled energy planning models
Adam Brandt, Energy Science & Engineering
Center for Fuels of the Future
Low-temperature plasma facilitated carbon capture and conversion to sustainable fuel
Mark Cappelli, Mechanical Engineering; Mateo Cargnello, Chemical Engineering
Center for Fuels of the Future
Direct, selective hydrogenation of CO2 to ethanol
Matteo Cargnello, Chemical Engineering
Center for Fuels of the Future
Geologic hydrogen: Understanding the processes driving natural hydrogen generation in Philippine ophiolitic terranes
Emmanuel Codillo, Earth & Planetary Sciences
Center for Fuels of the Future
Energy-water analysis for optimized sustainable electrochemical fuel production
Carlos Díaz Marín, Energy Science & Engineering; Meagan Mauter, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Center for Fuels of the Future
Tandem reactor for green methanol production using captured CO2 and renewable hydrogen
Thomas Jaramillo, Chemical Engineering
Center for Fuels of the Future
Programming post-Sabatier catalysis with light
Andrew Mannix, Materials Science & Engineering; Tony Heinz, Applied Physics
Center for Fuels of the Future
Decentralized electrochemical wastewater refining to produce high-purity ammonia fuel
William Tarpeh, Chemical Engineering; Riti Sarangi, SLAC; Robert Waymouth, Chemistry
Center for Fuels of the Future
Unlocking green hydrogen: Overcoming the iridium bottleneck
Xiaolin Zheng, Mechanical Engineering
Center for Fuels of the Future
Decarbonizing cement with CCS to assess if waste heat from a cement plant can be utilized for carbon capture
Tony Kovscek, Energy Science & Engineering; Sarah Saltzer, Stanford Center for Carbon Sequestration
Center for Fuels of the Future
Assessing the benefits and risks of Environmental Attribute Certificates as a mechanism to expand the clean steel and cement markets
Adam Brandt, Energy Science & Engineering
Center for Fuels of the Future
Availability and techno-economic analysis of decarbonization pathways for U.S. industrial heating
Carlos D. Diaz-Marin, Energy Science & Engineering
Center for Fuels of the Future
Support-free and low desorption temperature CO2 sorbents for low-cost capture from air
Carlos Díaz-Marín, Energy Science & Engineering; Nicholas Strange, SLAC
Stanford Center for Carbon Storage and Precourt
Leveraging AI-powered autonomous microscopy for accelerated battery development
Dan Congreve, Electrical Engineering; William Chueh, Materials Science & Engineering
StorageX Initiative
SpectraQuery: An AI and LLM platform for multimodal battery materials discovery
Eric Darve, Mechanical Engineering; Wendy Gu, Mechanical Engineering; Jagjit Nanda, SLAC; Yan-Kai Tzeng, SLAC
StorageX Initiative
Physics-guided machine language for real-time battery health prediction in silicon/graphite anodes
Simona Onori, Energy Science & Engineering; Daniel Tartakovsky, Energy Science & Engineering
StorageX Initiative
A data-driven, multi-fidelity design framework for highly efficient thermal management in hydrogen-powered aviation
Juan Alonso, Aeronautics & Astronautics; Sangjoon Lee, Mechanical Engineering
Sustainable Mobility Center
Beyond collisions: Learning semantic safety evaluators for autonomous mobility
Somil Bansal, Aeronautics & Astronautics
Sustainable Mobility Center
Integrating climate, infrastructure, and individuals for sustainable mobility
Rishee Jain, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Sustainable Mobility Center
Design, pricing, and operation of highway express lane systems
Ramesh Johari, Management Science & Engineering
Sustainable Mobility Center
Helical fiber structural batteries for sustainable air transportation
Natalie Larson, Mechanical Engineering; Adam Boies, Mechanical Engineering
Sustainable Mobility Center
Demand flexibility in industrial systems: A role in California and U.S. Northeast net-zero energy systems?
Adam Brandt, Energy Science & Engineering; Steven Davis, Earth System Science
Precourt Institute for Energy gift
System-level assessment and codesign of optical neural network for low-energy computation
Shanhui Fan, Electrical Engineering; David A. B. Miller, Electrical Engineering; Subhasish Mitra, Electrical Engineering
Precourt Institute for Energy gift
Enhancing energy equity through generative AI-driven building energy modeling
Rishee Jain, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Precourt Institute for Energy gift
Data-driven manufacturing of soft magnetic alloys for grid resilience
Wendy Gu, Mechanical Engineering; Shan Wang, Materials Science & Engineering
Precourt Institute for Energy gift
Two-step photon absorbers with molecular intermediate bands
Hemamala Karunadasa, Chemistry
Precourt Institute for Energy gift
Secure and sustainable electricity supply to support economic growth in Taiwan
Sally Benson, Energy Science & Engineering; Inés Azevedo, Energy Science & Engineering
Precourt Institute for Energy gift
Flow-electrode reactor for direct electrosynthesis of lithium minerals from geothermal brines
Juan Santiago, Mechanical Engineering; Thomas Jaramillo, Chemical Engineering; Adam Nielander; SLAC
SLAC-Stanford Battery Center
High-performance sulfide glass solid-state batteries through in situ characterization
Wendy Gu, Mechanical Engineering; Yan-Kai Tzeng, SLAC
SLAC-Stanford Battery Center
Atomic insights into battery materials via advanced STEM & 2D encapsulation
Colin Ophus, Materials Science & Engineering; Zhelong Jiang, SLAC; William Chueh, Materials Science & Engineering
SLAC-Stanford Battery Center
Interphase engineering for sodium-metal batteries via electrolyte development and polymer coating
Zhenan Bao, Chemical Engineering; William Chueh, Materials Science & Engineering
SLAC-Stanford Battery Center
SCOPE-S3P: Sodium-ion cathode optimization for performance and energy, Stanford–SLAC spray pyrolysis
Adam Boies, Mechanical Engineering; Zhelong Jiang, SLAC; Jagjit Nanda, SLAC
SLAC-Stanford Battery Center
AI enabled high throughput imaging of batteries under operation and aging
Dan Congreve, Electrical Engineering; Yan-Kai Tzeng, SLAC
SLAC-Stanford Battery Center
Safer batteries: Combining experiments and multiscale modeling for predicting thermal runaway
Ilenia Battiato; Energy Science & Engineering; Hamdi Tchelepi, Energy Science & Engineering; Xiaolin Zheng, Mechanical Engineering; Johannes Voss, SLAC; Xueli Zheng, SLAC
SLAC-Stanford Battery Center
Synchrotron characterization of integrated hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical battery recycling
William Tarpeh, Chemical Engineering; Molleigh Preefer, SLAC; Yan Xia, Chemistry; Xiaolin Zheng; Mechanical Engineering
SLAC-Stanford Battery Center
Zero-waste lithium-ion battery recycling using low-energy, membrane-free salt splitting
Matthew Kanan, Chemistry; Irshad Maniyanganam, SLAC
SLAC-Stanford Battery Center
Hexagonal boron nitride films as ion-selective conductors for lithium-metal batteries and lithium+ separation
Steven Chu, Physics; Andrew Mannix, Materials Science & Engineering; Yan-Kai Tzeng, SLAC; Jagjit Nanda, SLAC
SLAC-Stanford Battery Center