UC Santa Barbara materials assistant professor Raphaële Clément has been awarded two highly regarded honors for junior faculty, the 2023 Rising Star Award from Materials Today and the 2023 International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) Prize for Electrochemical Materials Science. 

Materials Today, the world’s largest publisher of peer-reviewed materials science and technology content, annually recognizes exceptionally capable researchers who possess the potential to become future leaders in the field. A panel of judges selected Clément in the field of energy conversion and storage. 

ISE honored Clément for her innovative work in the field of electrochemical materials science, including corrosion, electrodeposition, and surface treatment. As a recipient, Clément will present a guest lecture at the 2024 ISE Symposium. The institute comprises nearly 3,000 members from more than 70 countries. 

Clément says that the two awards recognize her research group’s efforts to relate materials synthesis, atomic structure, and performance in battery devices, using, mostly, magnetism and magnetic-resonance probes. 

“Over the past few years, we have shown that small imperfections, or disorder, in the arrangement of atoms in the bulk battery electrode and electrolyte materials underlies their performance in real devices,” explained Clément, who joined the UCSB Materials Department in 2018. “This understanding has enabled us to develop materials design rules, that is, new ‘recipes,’ for producing better battery materials.”

Clément’s previous honors include an Early CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation and an Emerging Investigator Award from the Journal of Materials Chemistry A in 2022. She sees all of the awards she has received as testaments to her research group and her colleagues, saying, “I am extremely thankful for the hard work of my students and postdoctoral researchers, and I look forward to more exciting studies coming out in the next few months.”