George Crabtree, PhD

Dr. George Crabtree, an Argonne National Laboratory Senior Scientist and Distinguished Fellow, is Distinguished Professor of Physics & Electrical and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago where he directs the Energy Initiative and Summer Institute on Sustainability and Energy, and he teaches courses on energy, climate change, and batteries. He is also co-director of Next Generation Electrochemistry and co-chairs the Chancellor’s Committee on Sustainability and Energy.

Dr. Crabtree is also Director of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research. As JCESR Director, Crabtree directs the overall strategy and goals of the research program and operational plan, acts as liaison to executives of JCESR partner organizations, and represents JCESR with external constituencies and advisory committees.

He has won numerous awards for his research, including the Kammerlingh Onnes Prize for his work on the physics of vortices in high-temperature superconductors. This prestigious prize is awarded once every three years; Crabtree is its second recipient. He has won the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Award for Outstanding Scientific Accomplishment in Solid State Physics four times, a notable accomplishment. He won an R&D 100 Award for his pioneering development of magnetic flux imaging systems.

Crabtree is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Charter Member of ISI’s Highly Cited Researchers in Physics, a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Crabtree has published more than 440 papers in leading scientific journals, collected more than 18,000 career citations, and has given more than 150 invited talks at national and international scientific conferences. His research interests include energy storage, materials science, nanoscale superconductors and magnets, superconductivity, and highly correlated electrons in metals.

He has led DOE workshops on next-generation energy storage, hydrogen, solar energy, superconductivity, and materials under extreme environments, and co-chaired the Undersecretary of Energy’s assessment of DOE’s applied energy programs. He has testified before the U.S. Congress on the hydrogen economy, meeting sustainable energy challenges and energy innovation Hubs. Crabtree earned his Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Doctor of Philosophy, Physics, University of Illinois Chicago
Master of Arts, Vocal Pedagogy, Texas Woman's University
Bachelor of Arts, Music Education, Alderson-Broaddus University

The Two Hydrogen Economies
Keynote Lecture, Australian Academy of Sciences Annual Symposium, Canberra, Australia, May 5, 2006

Basic Research for Solar Energy: Challenges and Opportunity
International Symposium on Innovative Solar Cells, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, Tokyo Japan, March 1-3 2009

New Science for a Secure and Sustainable Energy Future: a USA Perspective
Plenary Lecture at the German Renewable Energy Research Association, Berlin, Germany, Nov 24 2009

Inspiring the Future
George Crabtree, Commencement Address, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, May 6, 2012

From Quanta to the Continuum: Opportunities for Mesoscale Science
Materials Research for Advancing Society and Serving Science, Symposium in honor of Mildred Dresselhaus on the occasion of her winning the Acta Materialia Materials and Society Award, Boston, MA, Nov 25, 2012

Energy: The Next Fifty Years
I²CNER Annual Symposium
and the International Workshop 2013, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan, Jan 29, 2013

Opportunities in Computational Science: Genomes, Mesoscale and Closing the Loop
SIAM Conference on Computational Science, Salt Lake City UT, March 14, 2015

The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR): A New Paradigm for Energy Storage Research
The Electrochemical Society, Phoenix AZ, October 11-16, 2015

Storage at the Threshold: Lithium-ion Batteries and Beyond
Lithium Battery Power, Bethesda, MD, November 1-2, 2016

EVs and Smart Mobility
Battery Electric Vehicles, New York City, November 7, 2017

Storage at the Threshold: Lithium-ion Batteries and Beyond
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Seoul, Korea, December 6, 2017

Solving Materials Science Challenges to Shape Our Energy Future
AAAS Annual Meeting, Austin TX, February 18, 2018

The Future of Batteries: Challenges and Opportunities
CERA Week, Houston TX, March 4-9, 2018

Where are Batteries Going?
Innovation XLab Energy Storage Summit, SLAC National Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, September 17-18, 2018

Where is Energy Storage Going?
Environmental Law and Policy Center, Chicago IL, January 8, 2019

Materials and Applications for Next Generation Batteries
Advanced Automotive Battery Conference (AABC), Strasbourg, France, January 27-31, 2019