PhD student, Chemistry
Faculty advisor: Kyoung-Shin Choi
Brian Foster is an Advanced Opportunity Fellow and Graduate Research Scholar focused on electrochemistry. As a member of Kyoung-Shin Choi’s chemistry lab, he has helped develop a new method to recover valuable chemical elements from used lithium-ion batteries. Brian explained that as lithium-ion batteries are increasingly used in electric vehicles and other sustainability efforts, it leaves a lot of material that need to be recycled after the batteries reach the end of their lifespan. Previous methods to recover elements like lithium used more chemicals in the process, adding to the cost, and created more chemical waste.
“We’re taking that solution that we have and using our electrochemical system to then extract the ions that we want and recover them directly in a separate solution,” he said.
This technique is patented with WARF. The team also describes it in a paper published in ACS Energy Letters and covered by Chemical & Engineering News.
Brian said that as a researcher, he’s motivated by discoveries that can have a positive environmental impact. Many of the resources that go into lithium-ion batteries are limited, and the process for obtaining them is harmful to the environment and communities nearby.
“Being able to recycle batteries releases some of the stress on already limited resources and on communities that the production of those resources is mainly affecting,” Brian said.
Receiving a WARF-supported Advanced Opportunity Fellowship was instrumental in Brian’s decision to come to UW–Madison, he said. “I knew that Madison definitely had an interest in me, and they were putting their money where their mouth was with this fellowship opportunity.”
Being supported by a fellowship his first year helped him focus more on classes and finding a research group. He has also benefitted greatly from the Graduate Research Scholars community and the chance to meet other fellows and broaden his experience in graduate school.
Brian is now a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow (GRFP), having earned the fellowship in 2024. He said that the Advanced Opportunity Fellowship and patent both strengthened his GRFP application.
“The resources that WARF provides are very useful for my work in particular,” he said. “I’m extremely grateful and thankful for all of the funding that they’ve given.”