Jonathan Van Buskirk

Jonathan is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Grey Group at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. He employs a combined theoretical and experimental approach to investigating lithium-ion dynamics in rechargeable battery electrode materials to better understand these materials and design higher performing materials. Jonathan received his Ph.D. from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, in the United States, where he built tools to investigate atomic packing in intermetallic structures to better understand complexity in solids. 

At Kings College, Jonathan will build on his existing work to better understand the structure-property relationships that govern the correlation between atomic structure and ion dynamics to extract general design principles for battery materials. This includes performing calculations of the lattice vibrations of these materials and correlating lattice vibrations to ion hopping and other phenomena. The results of these calculations can then be mapped to observations made using experimental techniques such as diffraction and solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (ssNMR) spectroscopy.