N.S. prof wins $1M prize for research on batteries
HALIFAX — A Halifax professor who has partnered with Tesla to make better lithium-ion batteries — and, he hopes, help mitigate climate change — has won Canada’s top science award.
Jeff Dahn of Dalhousie University received the $1-million Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering on Tuesday evening in Ottawa.
Dahn’s pioneering work on lithium and lithium-ion batteries since 1978 helped develop the batteries that have made mobile devices part of our everyday lives.
Last summer, he began a five-year research partnership with Tesla Motors, the California electric car company headed by CEO Elon Musk.
Tesla is keenly interested in energy storage for solar and wind, and Dahn said addressing climate change is a “big motivator” for him.
Solar and wind energy will wean us off our fossil-fuel habit, and improved energy storage is the missing link, he said.
“When the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, you have to store so in the night and in the calm, you have electricity available,” he said.
Tesla set up a six-person lab in neighbouring Dartmouth so it could work with Dahn’s 25-member team across the harbour at Dalhousie.
“That was established so that Tesla would have a presence in Nova Scotia and could have more sort of proprietary research going on that was still making use of some our facilities,” Dahn said.
Dahn, 60, said he has no financial interest in the research — nor in the two battery-related companies that have been spun off from his Dalhousie lab.
“I’ve learned a man has to live within his limitations — I think that’s a Clint Eastwood quote from one of his movies,” he said. “I like to think about the science and get involved in the experiments and talk with the students about their results. That’s what I love. Anything businessrelated, I’ve learned, that’s not for me.”