M. Stanley Whittingham, who received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a SUNY distinguished professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering at Binghamton University, will keynote this year's Quest on April 6.
Quest is an annual symposium dedicated to sharing the scholarly and creative pursuits of students, faculty, and staff of SUNY Oswego. Presentations take the form of talks, competitions, panels, debates, shows, posters, readings, recitals and demonstrations. After two years of virtual presentations, it returns in a hybrid format for 2022.
Winning the prestigious honor for his invention and development of lithium batteries, Whittingham will discuss "Climate Change and the Electric Century" at 1 p.m. in the Deborah F. Stanley Arena and Convocation Hall on April 6. The talk is scheduled for around 30 minutes with a 15-minute Q&A to follow.
Whittingham has been active in this pursuit since 1971, when he won the Young Author Award of the Electrochemical Society for his work on beta-alumina. In 1972, he joined Exxon and discovered the role of intercalation in battery reactions, which resulted in the first commercial lithium rechargeable batteries that were built by Exxon Enterprises. In 1988, he returned to academia at Binghamton to initiate a program in materials chemistry.
He earned his bachelor's and doctor of philosophy degrees in chemistry from Oxford University, where he is an honorary Fellow of New College. In 2018 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering and received the Turnbull Award from the Materials Research Society, where he is also a fellow.
For more information, visit the Quest website.