The first online conference “European Perspectives on Batteries of the Future” (May 25/26, 2020) of EU battery initiative “BATTERY 2030+” turned out to be much larger than planned: Temporarily, around 750 participants simultaneously followed the conference video stream. The event was previously designed for only around 100 attendees.
Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the 17 speakers switched to video-communication from their offices or home instead. All participants were able to contribute questions and comments on individual presentations and lectures at any time.
Christian Punckt, Managing Director of the Cluster of Excellence “Post-Lithium-Storage” (POLiS) and organizer of the online conference, emphasized the unexpected attention of the conference: “Without exaggeration we can say that there are over 1,000 registered participants and the simultaneous presence of 750 participants was the largest online battery conference ever.”
Scientists, politicians and journalists from all over the world watched the lecture program. “We had some representatives of the EU Commission among us, and even though the vast majority of the participants came from universities, the industry was also well represented,” Punckt emphasized.
The conference was organized by the “Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage Ulm-Karlsruhe” (CELEST). It provided an overview of the research work carried out in Europe in connection with the newly introduced BATTERY 2030+ roadmap. Its purpose was to use the scientific discussions within the BATTERY 2030+ community as the basis for the next phase, the starting signal as a large-scale research initiative.
Deputy director of the HIU, Prof. Maximilian Fichtner, moderated the conference. In addition, the two HIU researchers Helge Stein and Marcel Weil presented their research.
The conference covered all current areas of battery research. “From state-of-the art activities on theoretical modeling, synthesis, analytics, and manufacturing and technology assessment up to paradigm-changing new Activities such as autonomous robots with machine learning for the materials acceleration platform”, there is already a profound basis for every research area of the BATTERY2030+ initiative, Fichtner explained.
BATTERY 2030+ is the large-scale, long-term European research initiative with the vision of inventing the sustainable batteries of the future to enable Europe to achieve the goals of a climate-neutral society as set out in the European Green Deal.
The Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage Ulm-Karlsruhe (CELEST) held its first web-based science conference from May 25th to 26th, 2020 to discuss prospects for future batteries in Europe.
On the 25th-26th The first web conference “European Perspectives on Batteries of the Future” took place in May 2020. (BATTERY 2030+)
Link to conference details
Conference Program and further details