Very insightful conversation with Jeff Dahn. The place of Moli Energy in the battery R&D is less known, but very important #battchat podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...

This has implications for AI4Science: “Across all tasks and models, the longer models spend reasoning and taking actions, the more incoherent they become” “Larger models learn the correct objective more quickly than they learn to reliably pursue it” alignment.anthropic.com/2026/hot-mes...

What happens if AI scientists can automate the research process (big IF)? Clever take by Andrew White

Definitely an underrated challenge holding back the research enterprise in the US

While we are all talking about data centers… “While the data center buildout is monopolizing headlines about grid challenges, it’s not the case that the AI boom is creating a capacity debt that wouldn’t otherwise have existed” www.latitudemedia.com/news/another...

Look at the heavy duty trend… #battchat

Peer Review and AI:Your(Human)Opinion Is What Matters ACS Nano Editorial pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... "No LLM can replicate critical thinking and experience of researchers. Editors specifically chose you because of your expertise; we value your unique perspective and evaluation,not that of an LLM"

“Seen this way, the design of autonomous laboratories cannot be separated from the design of the scientific enterprise itself.” 🧪 hhlee.substack.com/p/building-s...

If you had to design a battery from first principles to meet these 4 needs, would it be the same as an EV battery? #battchat

“According to numbers from BloombergNEF, the U.S. is expected to add 204 GW of battery storage in the next decade.” #battchat www.latitudemedia.com/news/the-une...

We close the year with one last article assessing preconditioning for Zn batteries @jmaterchem.rsc.org. Led by our group colleagues ⁦‪at ANL, in collaboration with Coulomb Technology to translate impact #battchat pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

Battery research has been ready to emancipate from the renewable portfolio for a few years… it is time to consider it on its own merits to enable many other technologies, too #battchat www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/c...

The concept of Szilard point: “the threshold at which the total cost of competing for a grant equals (or surpasses) the value of the available funding” Believe it or not, funding calls can cross it! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“Earlier this year, Frontiers piloted an in-house AI tool for peer reviewers in a handful of its journals. The GPT platform operates in a closed environment that protects the confidentiality of manuscripts and authors’ intellectual property.“ www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“This will be the starting point for a new Ford energy storage business; it plans to invest roughly $2 billion in the next two years” #battchat www.latitudemedia.com/news/the-ev-...

““I would love to see these models be applied to more blue sky, basic research”, Watney added” www.aip.org/fyi/nsf-to-i...

“The very structure that makes BRAIN funding defensible to Congress made the transformational science we promised nearly impossible to deliver” sciencepolicyinsider.substack.com/p/how-will-y...

The National Science Board, which oversees NSF, has published recommendations to update the foundation's merit review (which was just updated). Below are the main points. www.nsf.gov/nsb/updates/...

Think Li₂RuO₃ had been fully understood? This canonical “O redox” material still had some secrets to discover. We go deep into its structural evolution w/ Li content in our latest @physrevmater.bsky.social #NSFFunded link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/...

Of course, this begs the question: What is stopping NSF from implementing Tech Lab metrics to all standard grants? 🧪

Important research productivity metrics: - Funding/person - Compliance effort - Duration - Length of proposal Tech Labs vs standard NSF: - $10-50M/10-50 vs $100-200k/1-2 - Other transaction vs full rules - 5+ years vs. 3 years max - 5-8 vs 15 pp BIG DIFFERENCE!🧪 www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-ann...

A step change in US federal research funding.🧪 Compared to “classic” large NSF programs (max./year): STC: ~$6.0M. ERC: ~$6.0M. CCI: ~$4.0M. MRSEC: ~$4.5M These will be 2x-10x larger! www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-ann...

The relentless march of ever-falling battery prices continues. 🎁🔗 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

“By empowering researchers across all disciplines and institutions to accelerate science and engineering, AI could increase the productivity and impact of research, boost innovation, fuel economic growth, and improve people’s lives.” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Curious about Cu as the pixie dust of layered cathodes for Na-ion batteries? With collaborators at ANL, we have an answer on its changes upon Na removal. Check it out! #battchat pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Look at those images if you teach chemistry. #chemchat There are a couple of other mistakes, but big picture, it writes exams almost like a human (yeah, handwriting is too neat for an average student) 🧪

“LLMs are good at providing explanations. The problem is that pedagogically, explanations are over-rated.” substack.nomoremarking.com/p/llm-tutors...

“The result is striking: people who are most opposed to the consensus score lower on objective knowledge but express higher subjective confidence.” 🧪 marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...

Enough said! 🧪

“What has become clear is that LLMs designed for education must work against their default training. They must be deliberately constrained to not answer questions they could easily answer, to not solve problems they could readily solve” carlhendrick.substack.com/p/the-algori...

A new type of research institution! 🧪 As usual, it will boil down to how much money for how many people for how long. Meanwhile Arena Bioworks shuttered after just 2 years… and $500M! fiercebiotech.com/biotech/billio… So we shall see!www.corememory.com/p/exclusive-...re

“If it becomes possible to drastically compress months of PhD student labour, universities will need to decide whether to shorten doctoral programmes or expand their scope to tackle more ambitious, potentially interdisciplinary problems.” 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This should be a moment of pride for everyone involved 🧪

“Domestic large-scale battery systems’ capacity, which amounted to less than 4 GWh in 2024, is now at over 10 GWh, and is expected to increase to over 60 GWh in 2029.” #battchat www.latitudemedia.com/news/how-ene...

“CAISO has overseen a massive build-out of new energy and storage resources, including more than 26,000 megawatts of new capacity overall, which has also helped make the grid more stable, Mainzer said. The state hasn’t seen rolling blackouts since 2020.” #battchat www.latimes.com/environment/...

“Regardless of the choice of the convergence criterion, the results indicate that a representative volume of the composite electrode contains 100 to 1,000 NMC particles.” Important insight! #battchat doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Probably not the most quoted portion of this podcast, but good point about the future of higher education in the era of AI, and the inevitable hype 🧪 www.dwarkesh.com/p/andrej-kar...

1. To opinions! Solar is the cheapest source of bulk electricity in many countries, and the quickest to deploy, and now you couldn't stop it being built if you wanted to. The limits to PV build in most places are grid access, permitting, and sometimes installation labour.

(1/x) Excited to report VIPS (Volumetric imaging of biological specimens via photochemical sectioning) @science.org! VIPS uses light-based sample sectioning to eliminate the inherent imaging depth limit of high-resolution optical microscopes @supgokul.bsky.social: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The Gao lab at #UIC reports a breakthrough in volumetric fluorescence imaging, featured on the cover of Science Magazine! Their new technique, VIPS (Volumetric Imaging via Photochemical Sectioning), enables reconstruction of 3D images of whole tissues with unprecedented detail.

“I can tell you exactly why science struggles to reproduce its own findings: we built incentives that reward novelty and punish verification.” 🧪 substack.com/home/post/p-...

Michel was integral to the energy storage department at BerkeleyLab when our group started there. He was a thoughtful and caring leader, and a strong advocate of early career scientists. He will be missed. Rest in peace

Inorganic Materials for the win! Congratulations!

NEW: GLOBAL RENEWABLES OVERTAKES COAL How the heck did that happen so quickly?!...🧵

And are we really going to use EV batteries for this? #battchat podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

Is the R&D landscape in the US going through major organizational changes? Is blue-sky discovery shifting back to the private sector, after decades of dominance at universities and National Labs? The levels of investment in single SDL startups are impressive! 🧪

“[T]hat […] used to be an argument against electric vehicles and saying, no, if you really let consumers pick, they won't pick these. And then now, it's an argument for, let the consumer decide, open it up, see what happens.” #battchat podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/z...

“They suggest that there is excessive concentration on testing and producing deliverables, neglecting the equally important process of being generative, open, interdisciplinary and improvisational”🧪 www.technologynetworks.com/genomics/art...