My name is Guinevere Giffin, I am a Group Leader at Fraunhofer ISC, and at the same time I am also doing Habilitation at the University of Würzbürg.

What made you decide to develop as a scientist?

I was interested in science from an early age. I always knew I was going to do something with Math or Science. Chemistry started to get interested in high school. I had a wonderful teacher who used to sing the periodic table to us. And I just enjoyed chemistry from that point. And then, I had the fortune, or the luck to say, that I had a lot of professors who were able to push me, who were able to inspire me and really supported me to achieve the goals, and to achieve to get where I wanted to be.

What are the major challenges battery technologies face in the coming 5 to 10 years?

So that can be sort of divided into two areas: One. For lithium-ion, sustainability is going to become an even bigger issue, particularly with resource availability, how to deal with recycling, and things like that. In terms of solid-state, the challenges remain on how to get a good functioning cell. Interfaces are complicated, and a step that definitely has to be fully solved to get a commercially viable, high-performance solid-state battery.

What technological alternative to conventional lithium do you see as the most promising for the future of energy storage?

I have always sort of believed that there is not going to be a single technological solution. The energy that we are going to need in the future, not only to be used but also to be stored, is growing all the time. And, therefore, it is going to need all of the technologies that are being developed: So, not only batteries but also, for example, hydrogen. All of these technologies are going to be needed to provide the solution to the energy problems that we are going to face in the future.

How would you encourage young people to develop a career in the energy storage sector?

The interpersonal relationships are probably the most important aspect. I mentioned before the mentors who supported me, and I think that this is really a critical aspect in how we support our students, how we interact with our students, how we provide them opportunities to learn about the field, to learn a science, to be involved at an early age…early in their careers, and to continue to support them. From the point of being a student, a university student, or even before, all the way up to the point wherever they are chosen and pointed in their career class.