News

We are thrilled to announce that on November 2^nd, 2026, the Canepa Research Lab will move from the University of Houston to Purdue University, joining the School of Mechanical Engineering! This is an exciting new chapter for the group, and we can’t wait to continue exploring and designing functional materials in our new home.

The group was at the 250^th ECS Meeting of the Electrochemical Society, held on October 25–29, 2026, at the BMO Centre in Calgary, Canada.

Piero Canepa gave two invited talks:

• “Understanding and Mitigating Reactive Interfaces in All-Solid-State Batteries”, on which pairs of solid electrolytes can be stacked into stable bilayer separators for all-solid-state batteries (see our paper on halide bilayer separators).
• “Finding Active and Inactive Ion Sites in Organic Crystalline Materials for Electrochemical Applications”, on our methods for locating light ions such as lithium and hydrogen in organic crystals (see our paper in Chemical Science).

PhD student Harshan Reddy Gopidi gave a contributed talk, “Theory-Guided Crystal Structure Resolution of β-Li₄-o-DHT: A High-Voltage Organic Electrode Material”, on solving the crystal structure of a high-voltage organic electrode material that powder diffraction alone had left unsolved.

The work was carried out with our colleagues in the Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA) at Argonne, Oak Ridge and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of California San Diego and the University of Houston.

On October 22^nd, 2026, colleagues at the Texas Center for Superconductivity (TcSUH) at the University of Houston gathered to bid farewell to Prof. Piero Canepa and Prof. Yan Yao, who are leaving Houston for Purdue University and Columbia University, respectively.

Our perspective “Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials for Modeling Solid-State Batteries” has been published in Chemistry of Materials, DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.6c01051. The work was led by Mgcini Keith Phuthi and Shyue Ping Ong, and brings together researchers from UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, MIT, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, the National University of Singapore, the University of Houston, and Purdue University.

We are part of a team that has received an award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), in its MAGNITO program (Magnetic Acceleration Generating New Innovations and Tactical Outcomes), for the project “Motifs to Magnets: Ultra-strong Magnets Through Wyckoff and Lego-like Design”, together with Prashun Gorai at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Boniface Fokwa at the University of California, Riverside.

We welcome Hoa My (Mimi) Nguyễn to the group! Mimi, a senior undergraduate in Chemical Engineering at the University of Houston, joins us to work on Zr–Au hydrides, as part of a collaborative project with the Brgoch lab in the Department of Chemistry. Using first-principles calculations, Mimi will study the thermodynamic stability of these hydrides.

Our paper “Obtaining V₂(PO₄)₃ by sodium extraction from single-phase Na_xV₂(PO₄)₃ (1 < x < 3) positive electrode materials”, published in Nature Materials, has received the 2024 Vanadium Award (Retrospective) of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), among its 2025 Awards and Prizes. The medal was presented at the IOM3 Awards Day ceremony in London on December 4, 2025, by IOM3 President Christine Blackmore.

This summer two students join the group. Michael Ho, who graduated from high school with high honors, is now an undergraduate student in electrical engineering at Texas A&M University. Folasade Adegoju, from B. F. Terry High School, joins us as a high-school summer student through the American Chemical Society’s Project SEED, which gives students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds a paid summer of research in an academic lab.

Our group received support from Research Corporation For Science Advancement for a research project titled “Autonomous Discovery of Single-phase High-Entropy Transition Metal Chalcogenides”. This work is in collaboration with Shijing Sun at the University of Washington and Zak Al Balushi at UC Berkeley. We consider this a significant achievement, particularly during these uncertain times for federal funding.

Our group received support from The Welch Foundation for a research project titled “Exploring Links between Vibrational and Configurational Entropies in Complex Oxides via First-Principles and Machine Learning.” This is a significant achievement, particularly during these uncertain times for federal funding.

Our research recently published in Nature Materials, “Obtaining V₂(PO₄)₃ by sodium extraction from single-phase Na_xV₂(PO₄)₃ (1 < x < 3) positive electrode materials” (Nat. Mater. 24, 234–242 (2025), see the paper), carried out by Ziliang Wang in our group together with LRCS in Amiens, France, and ICMCB, Université de Bordeaux, France, was featured in Science: “Move over lithium: Sodium batteries could one day power a green economy”.

Our paper “Obtaining V₂(PO₄)₃ by sodium extraction from single-phase Na_xV₂(PO₄)₃ (1 < x < 3) positive electrode materials”, published in Nature Materials (DOI: 10.1038/s41563-024-02023-7) with our colleagues at LRCS in Amiens and ICMCB in Bordeaux, France, has been covered widely in the press, in English and other languages, including through a University of Houston press release. Ziliang Wang worked on the paper as a member of our group. The new single-phase cathode material raises the operating voltage of a sodium-ion battery from 3.37 V to 3.70 V, increasing its theoretical energy density by about 15%, from 396 to 458 Wh kg⁻¹.

Piero Canepa and Yan Yao, then of the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering, were interviewed on Houston Matters, Houston Public Media’s daily talk show on its NPR station, about how UH hopes to help build better, longer-lasting batteries. Listen to the segment:

On May 15^th, 2024, Piero Canepa gave an invited talk, “Moving Beyond Lithium-ion Batteries: the Rise of the Sodium Rechargeable Battery”, at Pint of Science in Houston, at True Anomaly Brewing Co. Pint of Science is a festival that brings researchers to pubs and bars to share their work with the public.

Our collaborative paper “Uncovering the Predictive Pathways of Lithium and Sodium Interchange in Layered Oxides” is out in Nature Materials, with Weihang Xie from our group among its authors.

Our paper “Devil is in the Defects: Electronic Conductivity in Solid Electrolytes”, published in Chemistry of Materials in 2021, has received the 2023 Chemistry of Materials Lectureship and Best Paper Award. The award was presented at the Chemistry of Materials Lectureship and Best Paper Award Symposium of the ACS Spring 2024 National Meeting in New Orleans (March 17–21, 2024).

On October 21^st, 2023, Piero Canepa and Abhishek Panchal volunteered at the Energy Day Festival in Sam Houston Park, Downtown Houston. Organized by the Consumer Energy Education Foundation, Energy Day is a free family festival with hands-on exhibits and demonstrations that teach students and their families about the many forms of energy and spark their interest in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Our paper “Zirconia-free NaSICON solid electrolyte materials for sodium all-solid-state batteries”, J. Mater. Chem. A 11, 23233–23242 (2023), is part of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s collection “Celebrating the scientific accomplishments of RSC Fellows” in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A. Piero Canepa is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Our group is excited to share with you that Piero has been named ACS Materials Au Rising Star in Materials Science!

On December 1^st PhD student Eshaan Patheria from the research group of Kim See at Caltech visited our laboratory.

Piero Canepa has been featured as one of the 2022 Emerging Investigators of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Journal of Materials Chemistry A (JMCA). This annual themed collection highlights some of the best research by scientists in the early stages of their independent careers who show the potential to influence future directions in materials chemistry. Piero is profiled in “Contributors to the Journal of Materials Chemistry A Emerging Investigators 2022 issue”, J. Mater. Chem. A 10, 19027–19045 (2022), on page 19028.

The group of Prof. Palacín at the Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona, Spain, could reproduce our predictions in Lu W., Wang J., Gautam G. S., Canepa P.; Chem. Mater. 33, 5809–5821 (2021) on CaV₂O₄ as cathode material for Ca-ion batteries.

Today, July 30^th, Baltej Singh published the exciting results of our research led by our collaborator Dr. Dipan Kundu in the School of Chemical Engineering at UNSW, Australia.

On July 15^th, Ziliang Wang passed the most important exam towards the fulfillment of his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at NUS. Big congratulations Ziliang towards your PhD achievements and success in science.

Piero Canepa, Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the National University of Singapore, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC).

On April 12^th, 2021, the research work of Tara P. Mishra entitled “Unlocking the Origin of Compositional Fluctuations in InGaN Light Emitting Diodes” and developed by NUS and SMART has received some press in a number of news outlets:

On February 5^th, the research work of Tara P. Mishra entitled “Unlocking the Origin of Compositional Fluctuations in InGaN Light Emitting Diodes” was published in Physical Review Materials. Tara developed a powerful methodology to detect the formation of In clusters in high Indium content In_xGa_1-xN LEDs quantum wells (QWs). His study showed a direct comparison between the computationally predicted and experimentally observed compositional fluctuations.

On December 10^th, Ziliang Wang passed his Comprehensive PhD Qualifying Examination (QE II). Big congratulations Ziliang towards your PhD achievements and success in science.

On August 27 2020 Dr. Zeyu (Jerry) Deng published his research work on NaSICON electrolytes and electrodes in Chemistry of Materials. The title of the manuscript is “Phase Behavior in Rhombohedral NaSiCON Electrolytes and Electrodes”. Check this out here!

On July 28 2020 Piero was named one of four NUS innovators on the NUS web-site as a result of his recently awarded NRF Fellowship together with three other colleagues from NUS. Check this out on NUS News!

Piero Canepa has been named one of the Outstanding Reviewers for the Journal of Materials Chemistry A in 2019. The journal’s editors choose these reviewers for the number, timeliness and quality of the reports they completed over the year.

We are very excited to welcome Hengning Chen from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), China, in our research group at NUS from August 2020. We wish her best of luck with her graduate studies in MSE at NUS!

The Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) Fellowship Scheme is a competitive program that seeks to attract, recruit and root outstanding young scientists from around the world to conduct independent research in Singapore.

Our review “Fundamentals of inorganic solid-state electrolytes for batteries”, published in Nature Materials in August, has been chosen for the cover of the journal’s December issue. The review, written with colleagues at the University of Bath and LRCS in Amiens, surveys how ions move through inorganic solid electrolytes, their electrochemical and mechanical properties, and the challenges that remain before solid-state batteries become practical.

Piero Canepa is awarded the 5^th NRF-ANR (Singapore-France) Joint Grant Call together with Prof. Christian Masquelier at LRCS, Amiens, France. More information can be found here.

Our review “Fundamentals of inorganic solid-state electrolytes for batteries” is out in Nature Materials. Written with Theodosios Famprikis, James Dawson, Saiful Islam and Christian Masquelier, of the University of Bath (United Kingdom) and LRCS in Amiens (France), it describes what is known about the inorganic solid electrolytes at the heart of solid-state batteries: how ions move through them across length scales, their electrochemical and mechanical properties, and how they are processed.

On Thursday 31 May, Piero Canepa will be presenting some work on multivalent batteries at e-MRS in Nice, France. More details can be found here. Invited talk AA.14.1.

On Wednesday 13 February, Dr. Jerry Deng, from the University of Cambridge has joined our research group at NUS. We are excited to learn new science from Jerry.

On Wednesday 16 January, Piero Canepa will be presenting his research work on Mg and multivalent batteries at A*STAR in Singapore. More details can be found here.

We are excited to announce the arrival of our new fileserver ORION from SUPERMICRO and with more than 70 TB disk capacity! This will host our data and part of our computational infrastructure to crank out the analysis of our data.

Today, we were awarded 10M CPU hours on the ASPIRE 1 HPCx located at the National Supercomputing Centre NSCC. We hope to deliver the promised science.

Today, Piero Canepa attended a short class on the management of simulations on the National Supercomputing Centre NSCC High performance computer Aspire-1. This class was very useful to identify engineers @NSCC to engage in the future.

Welcome to the web-site of the Canepa Research Lab. You will find here all about the research group and its work.