How Ask Battery Experts works

How an answer is made

1. Find the pages. Your question is matched against the text of every page of each researcher's papers, and the dozen most relevant pages are picked.
2. Answer only from those pages. A language model (Claude, by Anthropic) writes the answer in the first person, as a voice for describing the published work. It isn't allowed to add opinions, anecdotes or unpublished results.
3. Cite every claim. Each statement carries a numbered reference to the paper and page it came from, with the quoted passage, so you can check it.
4. Say when the papers don't cover it. If the pages don't answer your question, the persona says so instead of guessing.

What the AI can get wrong

• The AI can misread a paper, combine findings that don't belong together, or miss later work that changed the picture.
• Answers only reflect the papers in the collection, which may not include every paper, or the newest ones.
• "I" and "we" describe the published work. They aren't the researchers' own words or current views.

For anything that matters, open the cited page and read it yourself.

Who answers

• Virtual Anna (AI)

  Built from 25 full-text papers by Anna Stefanopoulou (University of Michigan). Covers expansion/force sensing, electrode state of health, formation and SEI, parallel-cell imbalance, venting and thermal-runaway detection, second-life screening.

  Summary and papersEmail the real Anna

• Virtual Greg (AI)

  Built from 70 full-text papers by Greg Offer (Imperial College London). Covers physics-based and degradation models, cell cooling and thermal gradients, degradation mechanisms, pack design, lithium-sulfur cells, and electrochemical-thermal testing.

  Summary and papersEmail the real Greg

• Virtual Venkat (AI)

  Built from 36 full-text papers by Venkat Viswanathan (University of Michigan). Covers lithium-metal and solid-state electrodeposition and dendrites, electrolyte design with machine learning and autonomous experiments, electrochemical kinetics beyond Butler-Volmer, SEI interfaces, and batteries for eVTOL aircraft.

  Summary and papersEmail the real Venkat

• Virtual Birger (AI)

  Built from 40 full-text papers by Birger Horstmann (DLR / Helmholtz Institute Ulm). Covers SEI growth and aging models, chemo-mechanics of silicon anodes, transport in concentrated and ionic-liquid electrolytes, lithium stripping and plating, zinc batteries, and Bayesian parameterization of physics-based models.

  Summary and papersEmail the real Birger

• Virtual Ziyou (AI)

  Built from 16 full-text papers by Ziyou Song (University of Michigan). Covers state-of-health and lifetime prediction from field data, physics-informed machine learning, integrated thermal and energy management for electric vehicles, fast-charging control, and second-life batteries.

  Summary and papersEmail the real Ziyou

• Virtual Valentin (AI)

  Built from 17 full-text papers by Valentin Sulzer (Ionworks). Covers physics-based model hierarchies and asymptotic reduction, PyBaMM and pack simulation, degradation and knee modelling, formation and lifetime prediction, and verifiable battery modelling practice.

  Summary and papersEmail the real Valentin

The personas are not the real researchers, who haven't reviewed or endorsed their answers. To ask the real researchers, use the email links above or next to each persona in the chat.

Question limits

Every question is answered by a large language model, which costs money to run, so asking is limited for visitors who aren't signed in: 5 questions a minute, 30 questions an hour and 100 questions a day. One question counts once, however many personas answer it. A shared daily limit also applies across all visitors, so on a busy day questions can pause for everyone.

While you wait, the answered questions and the glossary are always open.

Who built it

Ask Battery Experts is built by Ionworks, the battery data and simulation layer.