Kristin Aslaug Persson is a Research Chemist Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2008. Kristin obtained her Ph.D in Theoretical Physics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden in 2001 on phonon-related structural instabilities in metals and semiconductors. Shortly afterwards Kristin joined Gerbrand Ceder’s group at MIT as a postdoctoral associate to work on structure prediction in alloys. Between 2002-2003 Kristin stayed at home with her two daughters and rejoined the Ceder group in 2004. During the years 2004-2008 Kristin worked, as a postdoc at MIT as well as a consultant for Computational Modeling Consultants, Inc., on pressure-induced spin transitions, alkaline batteries, high-throughput materials prediction, dissolution of metals in aqueous media, Li diffusion in graphite, and more.
Currently, Kristin is part of the Modeling thrust in the the Batteries for Advanced Transportation Technologies (BATT) program which the premier fundamental research program in the U.S. for developing high-performance, rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs). This program is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Vehicle Technologies (OVT) and is managed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) as part of its Carbon Cycle 2.0 initiative. Kristin’s research focus is devoted to first-principles investigations of electrode materials, especially pertaining to ionic diffusion and/or surface phenomena.