Battery Insiders Introduction

0:00Transcript

0:00Welcome to Battery Insiders, your podcast providing you insights in the fascinating world of batteries. Hosted by Bhavya Jha and Simon Engelke. And welcome to our first session. Hey Bhavya, how are you doing? I'm doing well. How about yourself? We do well. Super excited for this to finally start. We've been talking about this for a while. We have been excited about having this podcast and having a chance to share some of our opinions, but not just ourselves, but also lots of amazing other leaders in the field of batteries and related. And today, we just really want to do a quick intro who we are. So you have a bit of an idea, maybe what viewpoints we are bringing and what we can contribute to this. Yeah. How about Bhavya, you start. Just give a quick intro who you are. Yeah, sure. I am Bhavya Jha. For those of you who don't know me, many of you at this point, I'm sure will be well acquainted later on as we continue producing these podcasts, but I'm very excited to be a part of this.

1:02My background is actually international politics. So people often ask, how did you end up in batteries? Well, after studying in DC, I worked at Tesla for two years, and that's really where I got knee deep, probably waist deep, in batteries and Model 3s and car production and worker health and safety. So that really was my first touchpoint with this whole new world. I learned a lot. I was there for about two and a half years. And after that, I went to Europe on a Fulbright research grant to research lithium-ion battery recycling and more broadly, end of life options and policies. So now I tend to be the policy slash regulatory person in any battery conversation. And I'm excited to share perspectives with those of you listening today and those of you who join us in the future. What about you, Simon? Yeah, thanks. Actually, funny because you mentioned Europe, and I know you have been to Berlin as well, part of that, which is my hometown.

2:01I'm still glad if you actually missed the chance to meet before COVID, because these days it will be even more complicated. But I think, yeah, just really quick about myself, you know, my background is in chemistry, physics, material science. I was fortunate to, you know, I grew up in Berlin, but I went to the Netherlands and then the US, UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, where I really got my first, I'd say, hands-on experience, you know, to make my own coin cells, make my batteries. Yeah, and was really excited there, but also Silicon Valley, see some of these ecosystems. After that, I had a great joy to be in the UK. I was at the University of Cambridge, where I did my PhD, our first master's and PhD on lithium-ion batteries, where I spent time on, you know, again, making all kinds of different cells with all kinds of different chemistries, also characterizing them. I have different characterization methods, you know, classic echochemistry, but also, you know, some bit more funky ones with nuclear magnetic resonance.

2:52So yeah, really, you know, I have spent a lot of time on the research side, which I really enjoyed. But also at the same time, I was fortunate to be involved with the World Economic Forum in different capacities. I was a fellow for the Global Future Council for Energy Technologies. I was also, you know, a co-curator of a strategic intelligence for them for batteries and future of energy. So I really had like a nice intersection of being, you know, in the research, but also sign of international collaboration, but also different stakeholders. But yeah, nothing compared to you in anything policy. So I'm very happy that you're part of this, because I think it's a very important lens on this topic, which also legal and policy and all these things really touching this quite heavily. Yeah, maybe just one last thing we can maybe talk about is, you know, you know, what do why are we doing this? Like, you know, why are we excited about, you know, having these discussions?

3:39Why are we excited to have other people showing their viewpoints? Why are batteries? Why do they matter, Bavia? Why do you think this is important? Well, batteries are the way we can accelerate our transition to sustainable energy. I know I sound a bit like that definitely was ingrained in me at Tesla. But as I've learned more and more about the industry, I've realized that this is the value of electrification and the value of sustainable transportation have both become very evident to me. And whether it's battery enthusiast or battery expert, I fall somewhere in that. And in fact, that's what led me to contact you. And now that I think about it, we could have we had a missed opportunity in 2018, I believe in LA, we were both at the Climate Reality Project, something that both of us have now done and have clearly taken to heart. And you, especially with Battery Associates, which you have now established as of September 2020. It's been growing so much.

4:37And it's been really exciting to be an advisory board member, both involved and also cheering you on from the sidelines. And so I think this is going to be our opportunity to finally pull people into this world because there's a lot of haziness around it. What exactly is it? How does it work? What are batteries? What are they doing? And we're going to make it more accessible. So I think that's why we're doing what we're doing right now. Absolutely. And it's actually nice to have this LA opportunity you mentioned. I think, yeah, you know, we also have been fortunate, as you mentioned, with Battery Associates, you know, we have been also fortunate to, you know, educate. We started something called the BatteryMBA, where you also are a lecturer. And, you know, it's been a really fantastic way to, you know, share some of these knowledge and, you know, also an executive level specifically. But also, I think, you know, we're really interested to kind of like a wider discussion, get more people interested in that.

5:28Also get them aware of what's happening. You know, it's a great job opportunity for many people. Maybe, you know, people interested in, especially for some sectors which are transitioning to renewable energies and sustainable energies. And yeah, so I think that's, you know, we're just interested to share. We also, you know, as you know, we're just coming from a clubhouse session. We have these weekly clubhouse sessions, which is a great platform also to discuss these topics with a big audience. But again, this is also limited right now to everyone with Androids and people have to be in the right times or some of these things. So, you know, I think this really comes down to something we both, I think, quite passionate about, which is about accessibility. And yeah, that's the idea, you know, make it more accessible. And actually the great thing, so we're going to host this through Anchor and you can actually send in your own audio snippets. You can get feedback in an audio form.

6:13So we're happy to bring them in. We also love to have, you know, guests on this. So if you have any, if you're interested to be part of it, just reach out to us. You know, I think we're quite approachable. And yeah, just be excited for this, you know, version one, number one. Let's go. So what did you think about today's conversation? Thanks, Bavia. Yeah, we will definitely go into this in the next session. So let's close this now and then go for that in a second. All right. Sounds good. Awesome. See you very soon, everyone. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.