Keith Stevenson

Biography

Professor Stevenson received his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of Utah under the supervision of Professor Henry White.   Subsequently, he held a postdoctoral appointment at Northwestern University (1997-2000); and a professorial appointment  2000-2015 at the University of Texas at Austin. Recently, he has served as a scientific thrust leader in Electrochemical Energy Storage on a $15M Department of Energy Frontier Research Center, Director of the $38M Center for Nano- and Molecular Science and Technology (CNM), and on the steering board for the Texas Materials Institute (TMI). Stevenson’s research interests are aimed at elucidating and controlling chemistry at solid/liquid interfaces vital to many emerging energy storage and energy conversion technologies.  To date he has published over 200 peer-reviewed publications, six patents, and six book chapters in this field. He is a recipient of a NSF CAREER award (2002), the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools New Scholar Award (2004), the Society of Electroanalytical Chemistry Young Investigator Award (2006), and Kavli Fellow (2012).  Keith is a member of the American Chemical Society, Electrochemical Society, Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry, and the Materials Research Society. Stevenson has been extremely innovative in pursuing major research and educational initiatives in nanomaterials and nanotechnology areas. This includes serving as the faculty advisor for the CNM’s Doctoral Portfolio Program that has produced a successful cadre of more than 120 well-trained scientists and engineers from 14 different academic departments since its inception in 2002. He also managed several shared instrumentation facilities, which total over $20M in housing state-of-the-art equipment including $4M+ of resources acquired by US federal funds and private foundation grants. On the educational side, he has been the State Director of the Welch Foundation Summer Scholar Program (2008-2015) which funds summer research activities for high school students across the state of Texas, with over 1600 students served. He is also one of three founding faculty members of UT-Austin’s federally funded Undergraduate Freshman Research Initiative (FRI). Now over 600 undergraduate students have performed research and published their work under his direction in the area of nanomaterials for catalysis. The FRI program currently involves over 25 research faculty and >800 undergraduate researchers per year; and is transforming the way undergraduate research is conducted at large tier one research universities. At present, he is leading the development of a new graduate level university (Skolkovo Institute for Science and Technology) in Moscow, Russia where he is the Director of the Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage (CEE). The CEE conducts research that supports the energy industry in Russia and the world, and develops and demonstrates materials, devices and systems that provide the basis for innovative opportunities for advanced energy storage technologies. The research program concentrates around new metal-ion and metal-air battery chemistries, and new fuel and solar and electrolysis cell technologies. The CEE is generously funded to collaborate closely with MIT, Moscow State University, and other top universities around the world.

Research Interest

Atomic and molecular structure; interactions of atoms and molecules at surfaces; interfacial electrochemistry and development of electrochemical theory and methods; molecular transport phenomena; scanning probe microscopies (STM, AFM, and SECM); optical microscopy; development of analytical techniques; materials chemistry; development of electrochemical techniques; energy storage and conversion; chemical sensors.