Shane Ardo named Moore Inaugural Inventor Fellow and has also won a Beall Innovation Award.
Today, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation selected five aspiring inventors as the inaugural cohort of Moore Inventor Fellows. This new fellowship program recognizes early-career innovators at U.S. universities with a high potential to accelerate progress in scientific research, environmental conservation and patient care.
For the Beall award, Prof. Shane Ardo and his team will develop a polymer membrane electrolyte that has a benign, near-neutral pH and rapid ionic conductivity. The final project deliverable will be a membrane (5.3 cm x 5.3 cm) that will be evaluated as a membrane-electrode-assembly (MEA) using low-cost nickel-based electrocatalysts (NiwFexOyHz and NiaMob) in a commercial reversible fuel cell, meaning it can act in fuel cell or electrolyzer mode. The target milestone performance will be 0.5 W/cm2 (0.5 V at 1 A/cm2) in fuel cell mode and 1 A/cm2 at 1.9 V bias in electrolyzer mode.
