Whether for storing renewable energy or for use in electromobility, batteries are a crucial building block for the sustainable transformation of our society. New materials are needed to make them more efficient and climate-friendly. This is where Helge Stein's research comes in: He wants to significantly shorten the process of searching for materials, which is usually like looking for a needle in a haystack.
To this end, he and his team at the Chair for Digital Catalysis have integrated machine learning and robotics into their research. Using state-of-the-art algorithms and data analysis, they optimize individual materials and components, always taking the context of their application into account. The findings are automatically fed back into the process. “Machine learning needs a lot of high-quality data,” says Helge Stein. “We get this by having robots carry out the experiments.” In this way, reproducible data is collected and stored in a semantically searchable way using a specially developed data management system. “This allows us to radically accelerate the way we conduct research,” says Helge Stein.
His goal is to establish a global, decentralized materials acceleration platform and to network research across multiple locations and laboratories in an interdisciplinary manner. “This takes research to a whole new level as we can suddenly correlate things that were previously invisible,” he says. The newly appointed professor at TUM is just as passionate about teaching as he is about his research: “I'm burning for it and I'm looking forward to passing on the fire of innovation to the next generation."
Personal details:
Helge Stein completed his doctorate in mechanical engineering at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in 2017. He then worked at the Joint Center for Artifical Photosynthesis and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, USA, until 2020. He was then Professor of Applied Electrochemistry at the Helmholtz Institute Ulm of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. On July 1, 2023, he was appointed Professor of Digital Catalysis at TUM.
Original article: https://www.tum.de/en/news-and-events/all-news/press-releases/details/radically-accelerate-the-way-we-do-research