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30 SMT Magazine • May 2017 "Students need an opportunity to put their skills and interests to a real-world test," Roller explained. "Employers need the opportunity to engage, evaluate, and identify future potential employees. As a high school senior, my guid- ance counselor and business teachers encour- aged me to apply for a part-time clerical posi- tion at Indium to gain real-world experience that would help me evaluate a career in busi- ness. I'm now in my 30th year at Indium, and it all started with a willing employer giving an ambitious student an opportunity to observe, learn, and do." "My internship experience was an ideal way to transition from academia to implementing my skills in the professional field," Reece con- cluded. "And I think my work was really benefi- cial to Indium." SMT Rick Short is the director of marketing communications at Indium Corporation. KEEPING AN EYE ON THE NEXT GENERATION Purdue University is working with MIT and Stanford University in a project funded by the Toyota Research Institute to improve rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and accelerate their integra- tion into electric and hy- brid vehicles. Purdue's part of the four-year effort is to bet- ter understand the fun- damental science gov- erning how a battery's internal architecture impacts energy storage, re- charging speed and reliability, according to Edwin García, a Purdue professor of materials engineer- ing. Advanced multi-scale modeling and simula- tions will be used to guide experiments aimed at improving the design of electrodes called cath- odes and anodes, which contain particles made of emerging materials such as lithium iron phosphate or lithium cobalt oxide. While the Purdue researchers will focus on the- ory, they will collaborate with their Stanford and MIT counterparts to guide the design of experi- ments based on insights from modeling. Data from the experiments will then, in turn, be used for input and validation to refine modeling, with the ultimate goal of solving key limitations in to- day's rechargeable bat- teries. "This work is data- driven, and we want to learn how the nano- scale structure affects a material's macro-scale behavior and overall battery performance," García said. "We will use data to come up with better models and to better understand the basic science of materi- als at the atomic scale." The porous electrodes must contain just the right density and design of particles for optimal performance and diffusion of lithium ions, which are contained in an electrolyte liquid or gel. The three universities are sharing $10 million as part of a $35 million initiative by Toyota. The proj- ect began in early April. Researchers will observe the changing micro- scopic details of the particles as a battery charges and discharges. The project will involve two Purdue graduate students. "They will be directly involved with ex- perimentalists at Stanford and MIT, actually in- fluencing the design of the experiments, and for modeling students that's very unusual," García said. "That's a huge gain intellectually for the students." 'Data-Driven' Design Could Lead to Improved Lithium-Ion Batteries