Professor Jeff Gostick was awarded the 2023 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship. The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) offers programs that allow exceptional international researchers to engage in collaborative research with researchers in Japan. This enables discussion and an exchange of ideas.
Gostick spent two terms in 2023 at Osaka University visiting the research labs of Professor Shohji Tsushima. For Gostick, it was a full circle moment as he had visited Japan as a PhD student in 2007 and worked with Tsushima who, at the time, was a new assistant professor.
Gostick’s research in Japan was focused on developing a computational platform for designing enhanced electrode structures for redox flow batteries. Tsushima’s research also involves batteries and fuel cells for large-scale energy storage. This work was especially exciting because it used genetic algorithm optimization to predict structures that simultaneously had higher reaction rates and lower pumping costs.
The figure below illustrates the improvement achieved over thousands of generations, along with a 2D example of the final optimized structure.
Gostick, Director of the Porous Materials Engineering and Analysis Lab (PMEAL) also had the opportunity to present this ongoing research in designing improved electrodes and optimizing the topological properties of a porous material at two conferences in Japan. In addition to the cutting-edge research, lifelong friendships and collaborations were forged over sushi and sake.
Gostick, Azzam-Dullien Endowed Chair, was also honoured with an Outstanding Performance Award from the Faculty of Engineering.