ECE’s Yao Wins 2025 Edith And Peter O’Donnell Award In Engineering From TAMEST

Forward-thinking materials scientist Yan Yao, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering, is the recipient of the 2025 Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Engineering from TAMEST. He was chosen for creating environmental and sustainable solutions for lithium-ion battery technology.

The world runs on lithium-ion batteries, but their dependence on scarce resources, like lithium, cobalt and nickel creates environmental challenges. These critical minerals require intensive mining and are not renewable. To combat this, Yao’s research focuses on discovering new materials and storage mechanisms for batteries based on abundant materials while creating energy storage solutions that reduce reliance on critical resources and have a positive environmental impact.

Yao and his team started by looking at materials available at scale and developing methods to design and synthesize new materials with tunable electrochemical responses and transport properties similar to those in lithium-ion batteries. By learning to control reactivity at interfaces, his team demonstrated sustainable batteries that outperform traditional battery technologies.

Building on advances in materials development and mechanistic understanding, his team developed aqueous batteries, which use water as an electrolyte, making them inexpensive, nonflammable and abundant. By utilizing materials such as sodium and magnesium, which can be extracted from seawater and are largely available in the United States, his team is creating renewable energy storage solutions that are cheaper, safer and less energy intensive to produce without worry of supply chain issues.

“As energy demands from electric vehicles and grid storage continues to escalate, the importance of producing more environmentally friendly batteries has never been greater,” said nominator Pradeep Sharma, Dean of the Cullen College of Engineering and Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished University Professor. “Dr. Yao is tackling critical scientific challenges and is focused on developing technologies that power a sustainable, better future. His inventions, including aqueous organic batteries, magnesium batteries and solid-state sodium batteries, will undoubtedly have an enormous impact on environmental and energy sustainability.”

“The Edith and Peter O’Donnell Awards are a huge award in our state, and it is extremely competitive due to the fact that Texas has many talented scientists deserving of this award,” said Edith and Peter O’Donnell Awards Committee Chair Margaret “Peggy” A. Goodell, Baylor College of Medicine, who herself received the O’Donnell Award in Medicine in 2011. “I’ve seen firsthand how impactful these awards can be to a young researcher in our state, and it is an honor to help carry the tradition to the next generation. These five researchers are truly among the best and brightest in Texas, and we can’t wait to see where their careers take them from here.”

More than $1.5 million has been awarded to more than 75 recipients in the categories of Medicine, Engineering, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences and Technology Innovation since the inception of the O’Donnell Awards in 2006. Sixteen O’Donnell Awards recipients have gone on to be elected to the National Academies, including five who have been elected to more than one National Academy.

The recipients were honored at the 2025 Edith and Peter O’Donnell Awards Ceremony and give presentations on their research at the TAMEST 2025 Annual Conference: Transformational Breakthroughs, at the Westin Las Colinas in Irving, Texas.

All are welcome to register to attend the ceremony and the TAMEST Conference.

Press release courtesy of TAMEST, with additional editing and information from the Communications Department of the Cullen College of Engineering.